III. SIR WILLIAM FOTHERGILL COOKE.
WILLIAM Fothergill Cooke was born near Ealing on May 4, 1806, and was a
son of Dr. William Cooke, a doctor of medicine, and professor of anatomy
at the University of Durham. The boy was educated at a school in
Durham, and at the University of Edinburgh. In 1826 he joined the East
India Army, and held several staff appointments. While in the Madras
Native Infantry, he returned home on furlough, owing to ill-health, and
afterwards relinquished this connection. In 1833-4 he studied anatomy
and physiology in Paris, acquiring great skill at modelling dissections
in coloured wax.
In the summer of 1835, while touring in Switzerland with his parents, he
visited Heidelberg, and was induced by Professor Tiedeman, director of
the Anatomical Institute, to return there and continue his wax
modelling. He lodged at 97, Stockstrasse, in the house of a brewer,
and modelled in a room nearly opposite. Some of his models have been
preserved in the Anatomical Museum at Heidelberg. In March 1836,
hearing accidentally from Mr. J. W. R. Hoppner, a son of Lord Byron's
friend, that the Professor of Natural Philosophy in the University,
Geheime Hofrath Moncke. had a model of Baron Schilling's telegraph,
Cooke went to see it on March 6, in the Professor's lecture room, an
upper storey of an old convent of Dominicans, where he also lived.
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