ART. IV. DR. JOHN ESTEN COOKE.

WE have long been anxious to discharge a sacred duty which we owe to the Church and to the memory of one of her most devoted sons-the late John Esten Cooke, M. D. Dr. Cooke was one of the most remarkable men of our day. With great powers of observation and application, there was combined in him a logical force unsurpassed and hardly equaled, by any of his contemporaries in Church or State. The greater part of his life was spent in the active practice of his arduous and engrossing profession, and in the composition of some of the ablest works that have ever illustrated and enlarged the science of medicine. Long after he had passed the meridian of life, and while he was in the full practice of his profession, and engaged with all the earnestness and enthusiasm of his character in teaching this noble science to others, he was led, by an apparent accident, but by a real Providence, to examine the history and constitution of the Christian Church. The absorbing interest of the theme at once enlisted all his powers. With unparalleled industry and intense concentration of mind, he gave himself up to the enquiry. In a few months he accumulated and thoroughly digested the lore which ordinary theologians require a lifetime to obtain. The remarkable publications in which he exhibited the results of his great mind, operating upon this mass of erudition, placed him at once in the front rank of the theological writers of his age and country. For many years after this, he continued to be the enthusiastic student and the successful teacher of both these two great departments of human learning-Medicine and Theology. It is due to the Church and to the world, that the memory of such a man should not die.

John Esten Cooke was born in Boston, Mass., on the 2nd of March, 1783, while his parents were on a visit to that city. His father, Dr. Stephen Cooke, and his mother, Catharine Esten, were natives of the island of Bermuda, "connected," says Mr. Caswall, "with some distinguished families in England." They continued to reside in Bermuda until 1791. In that year they removed to Alexandria, in Virginia, and not long afterwards to Loudon County, Va., near Leesburg. They had eight children, six sons and two daughters. One of the sons, John R. Cooke, attained to considerable eminence at the

bar; and another, St. George Cooke, is still serving with distinguished reputation in the army of the United States.

John Esten Cooke, the eldest son, received the degree of Doctor of Medicine, from the University of Pennsylvania, and commenced the practice of his profession in Warrenton, Fauquier County, Va. In 1821, he removed to Winchester, then the chief town of the "Great Valley of Virginia." In this rich and beautiful valley flows the Shenandoah to its junction with the Potomac, having the Blue Ridge on the East, and the Alleghany mountains on the West. Dr. Cooke remained in this place in the active practice, and in the enthusiastic study, of his profession, until 1827. Here he published an Essay on Fever, which excited very great attention, and soon afterwards the first volume of his great work on Pathology and Therapeutics.

In 1827, Dr. Cooke was elected to the Chair of the Theory and Practice of Medicine in the University of Transylvania; and, accepting that office, removed the same year with his family to Lexington, Ky.

His career as a Professor in that school, was one great and almost unexampled triumph. Although troubled with a slight impediment of speech, the earnestness of his manner, the depth of his convictions, the singleness of his purpose, the simplicity and comprehensiveness of his views, and the evident intensity of his devotion to truth, made him the most interesting of lecturers. His system of Pathology, and the practice founded thereon, very soon obtained an unquestioned ascendency, and almost universal acceptance, in the West and Southwest.

The simplicity of that system, and the consequent facility with which it could be abused by inexperienced and unskillful physicians, and even by unprofessional persons, are probably the causes in part of the rapid decline of the system in professional favor, about the time that Dr. Cooke ceased to be its public teacher and expounder. Another, and the principal cause for this result, is the fact that the current literature of the Medical profession in this country, comes from London, Edin burgh, and Paris.

That a Medical system, proposing itself as true and substantial, and implying of course that preceding systems had been visionary and shadowy, and therefore entitled to take the place of them all, and to keep it, had originated with a country Doctor in the Valley of Virginia, or with a Professor in a backwoods college at Lexington, Ky., was an idea which the profession at large would not entertain. So the influence of Dr. Cooke's lectures and writings was confined to the West. The magnates of the profession in the great Eastern cities and

colleges, paid little or no attention to this new system, and still continued to look for knowledge and instruction to European centres of intelligence.

Soon after his removal to Lexington, Dr. Cooke published the second volume of his treatise on Pathology and Therapeutics. Of this remarkable effort of genius and labor, we of course express our own opinion in saying, that it is unsurpassed by the profoundest works in Law, Theology, or Medicine, for its large array of facts, and for its close and impenetrable logic. In 1828, Dr. Cooke, in conjunction with Dr. Charles W. Short, Professor of Materia Medica and Medical Botany in the same University, commenced the publication of "The Transylvania Journal of Medicine and the Associate Sciences." All the early volumes of this Journal are enriched by the labors of Dr. Cooke. He contributed to it a succession of valuable papers on many of the most important practical questions connected with his profession. Speaking of these papers, the Editor of the Western Journal of Medicine and Surgery, said in 1854, "Honesty of purpose marks everything which has emanated from the pen of Dr. Cooke. It is visible in every page of his voluminous writings. He sought truth, and truth only. He never contended for victory, but for principle. * His works are models of a clear, direct, simple style." Dr. Yandell very beautifully adds, "It has been remarked, that few men can be trusted to write their own biographies. Dr. Cooke is one of the few who, without any detriment to his fame, might have performed that delicate work. He would have written his life with all the honesty that he lived it-with perfect impartiality, keeping nothing back through a weak vanity, and exaggerating nothing." (West. Journal of M. and S., Oct., 1854.)

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The Medical views of Dr. Cooke, so ably and perseveringly maintained, were subjected to a severe but triumphant test by the Cholera which desolated Lexington in 1833. Dr. C. was in Philadelphia at the time of its terrific access. He hurried to the scene of danger as fast as the conveyances of the day would admit, and threw himself into the conflict with his wonted energy and decision. He considered Cholera as belonging to the class of Malarious diseases, and treated it as such, bat with a vigor of administration proportioned to the frightful violence of the malady. In a paper published in the Transylvania Journal of Med., he gives a history of each case, and demonstrates, as far as complete success could do it, the soundness of his views, and the propriety of his treatment. It was during this most active period of his active life that Dr. Cooke was called upon to turn his great powers to another

and very different field of research. For many years previous to 1829, he had been a zealous and devoted member of the Methodist Communion. The causes that induced him to abandon this connection, and to attach himself to the Protestant Episcopal Church, are fully stated by himself in the introduction to his Essay on "The Invalidity of Presbyterian Ordination." The extract we give is long, but it will well repay perusal.

“When a man who has, for eighteen years of his life, taken an active part in the concerns of a religious society, and promoted its interests with all his power, leaves it and attaches himself to another, a decent respect for their opinion, as well as a proper regard for his own character for consistency and uprightness, renders it not improper that he should state the reasons which induced him to make the change. This I propose to do in the following pages.

"Those who know me intimately, know that I have ever embraced the truth when convinced I had discovered it, with little regard for the consequences that might follow. Having had the truths of the Christian religion impressed upon my mind by the unwearied care of a most affectionate mother, I occasionally had serious reflections on the subject, although in general by far too indifferent to it, until about nineteen years ago. In the summer of 1810, I met with a pamphlet called the 'Star in the East,' by Dr. Buchanan, giving an account, among other things, of the discovery of a Christian Church in Hindoostan, secluded from all the world, which derived its origin from the Apostles themselves. This narrative produced a very strong impression on my mind, and, as I had been for some months more thoughtful than common on the subject of relig ion, I determined to investigate the evidence on which the doctrines of the Christian religion rest. Shortly after, a bookpeddler passed through the village, and I purchased a Bible with Canne's marginal references, and Bishop Porteus' Evidences of the Christian Revelation.

"I had always been in the habit of requiring strong evidence upon every subject, and never yielding assent to any thing that was not supported by it. I sat down, therefore, to the reading of Porteus with the determination narrowly to examine and weigh every argument.

"The result was a strong impression made on my mind by the first perusal, during which no quotations from the Scripture were examined, the interest excited by the force of the argument being too great to allow stopping to examine them. The book was read, however, very attentively a second time, with careful examinations of the quotations of Scripture, and the

result was a thorough conviction of the truth of the Christian Revelation; immediately on expressing which to myself, with an audible voice, I felt my mind drawn out in a feeling of gratitude and love to that Saviour who had died that I might livethe first I had experienced, and not to be forgotten while life and recollection shall continue. The first reading of this book was in September or October, 1810. It had such an effect on my mind as to lead me to regular private devotion. The second reading was about Christmas.

"Between the middle and end of January, I heard my friend Mr. Yidings, to whom I was then an entire stranger, preach for the first time, and again on the Sunday following, and was so much pleased that on the Sunday week after I became a member of the Methodist Society, which I then considered the purest Church as to doctrine. In that society I have continued ever since, in general, well satisfied; and among its members, but particularly the preachers of the Baltimore Annual Conference, I have many valued friends. These I would not offend, I would not appear to slight, for any thing less than conscience' sake. That I have, until within the last eight weeks, taken an active part in promoting the welfare of the society which I have left, is well known to some of them, and was not long ago evinced in the part I took in the establishment of a religious paper to be published by the Methodist Society.

"Soon after that time a volume of sermons by the Rev. Dr. Chapman, for which I had subscribed, was brought home, and for some days no attention was paid to it. At a leisure moment curiosity led me to look into it, when I found the manner and style so striking, and the subject so new to me, that I determined to read the book. I had heard that the Church denied the validity of Presbyterian ordination; but had never thought it worth while to inquire into a claim at first sight apparently so extravagant. so extravagant. I was determined to see what could be said in support of such pretensions. I read carefully the first seven sermons, by which I was most forcibly struck. The language chaste, the style perspicuous, I was carried along without labor, and comprehended without the slightest effort. The manner of handling the subject was strikingly moderate, and as charitable as any man could reasonably desire. Supporting the doctrine of the invalidity of ordination by Presbyters, and the validity by Episcopal ordination alone, the author proceeds in maintaining the argument, without uncharitable reflections; and when he condemns, does it in the mildest language, and often or always with expressions of good opinion of the motives of the opposite party. If there is any thing offensive to any one, in the book, it is a quotation-and quotations