The eldest son of E T Cox, a well-known Birmingham surgeon (1769-1863). After education at King Edward VI Grammar School and at the General Hospital, Birmingham, he studied at Guy's and St Thomas's Hospitals, (1821-1823), and at the École de Médecine, Paris (1824). Early in his career he conceived the idea of establishing a school of medicine in Birmingham on the lines of Grainger's school in London. After visiting numerous schools, both British and Continental, he settled in Birmingham, was appointed Surgeon to the General Dispensary in 1825, and commenced to lecture on anatomy, with physiological and surgical observations, on Dec 1st, 1825, at Temple Row. In 1828 he succeeded, after opposition, in founding, in conjunction with Drs Johnstone, Booth, and others, the Birmingham School of Medicine, himself lecturing on anatomy at first, and later on surgery. He took an active part in the formation of the Provincial Medical and Surgical Association (now the British Medical Association): in 1840-1841 he founded the Queen's Hospital, Birmingham, and became its Senior Surgeon. In 1843 he secured a Royal Charter for his medical school by the title of Queen's College, and its scope was enlarged to that of a College in Arts in 1847, and in Theology in 1851. Cox's aim was to make his college into a university for the Midlands, but it appears his administrative ability was not equal to his creative power and he became embroiled in serious quarrels with his associates. This led to an inquiry in 1860 by the Charity Commissioners, with the result that the hospital and college were separated; thereafter Cox ceased to take part in the work of either. He left Birmingham on his father's death in 1863 and lived at Bole Hall, near Tamworth, at Leamington, and at Kenilworth, where he died on December 23rd, 1875. Cox left nothing to the institution he had founded, but he bequeathed £3000, with his medical library and instruments, to the Cottage Hospital at Moreton-in-the-Marsh, as well as other charitable bequests. There is a Maguire lithograph of him in the College Collection, dated 1854, and a portrait in Barker's *Photographs of Eminent Medical Men*, 1865, i, 61. Publications: *A Synopsis of the Bones, Ligaments and Muscles, Blood-vessels, and Nerves of the Human Body*, 1831. *A Letter to J T Law on establishing a Clinical Hospital at Birmingham*, 1849.