Name: Sir Astley Paston Cooper Dates: 1768-1841 Nationality: English Last Post: Guy's Hospital Last ward round note: Miss Penelopes suspensory ligaments are holding taut.

Astley Cooper's father was a Norfolk clergyman and his uncle was William Cooper (appointed as a staff surgeon at St Thomas' and Guy's Hospital). It was at St Thomas' that he started his medical studies, later moving to Guy's on the death of his uncle. John Hunter was a earlier tutor and in the winter of 1787 he also visited the anatomy department at the University of Edinburgh.

In 1789 he was appointed demonstrator in anatomy at St Thomas' and in 1783 he gave lectures in anatomy for the Company of Surgeons. In 1800 he took over his uncles post at Guy's Hospital where he remained for most of his professional life, possibly in search of the perfect suspensory ligaments. Who knows?

His other claim to fame is in the tieing off of various arteries to treat aneuryms and he proposed this treatment in one of his works - Medico-Chirurgical Transactions