Report of the trial, Cooper versus Wakley, for libel / from the notes of W.B. Gurney ; with remarks on the evidence, by Bransby B. Cooper.

  • Cooper, Bransby Blake, 1792-1853.
Date:
1829
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Report of the trial, Cooper versus Wakley, for libel / from the notes of W.B. Gurney ; with remarks on the evidence, by Bransby B. Cooper. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    the very reverse; you will recollect Mr. Harrison's testimony, on which at present I say nothing, for my time is not yet come to comment upon the Defendant's evidence. Gentlemen, I have stated the history of Mr. Bransby Cooper j I have stated to you the progress he has made to that eminence in Guy's Hospital, which he now holds, which has made him the object, no doubt, of envy and jealousy to some, but to none of that highly honourable and useful pro- fession who stand at the top of it; they disregard all pitiful sentiments of competition and rivalry; they have come forward—they have crowded in this Court to bear their testimony to the skill of their competitor, and to endeavour to save him from that ruin into which the malice of this man, and the enmity of another, have attempted to plunge him. Gentlemen, it is time now you should hear who the Defendant is; be- cause when a Plaintiff seeks redress for a libel, it is fitting you should know the parties; upon that I shall be very short. I should not have known, but from the exhibitions of yesterday, of the Defendants extreme ignorance in the art he once professed; but I am entitled to say, from the surprise he ex- hibited at the expressions of some of his witnesses yesterday, that he never witnessed an instance of the operation being performed, and is as ignorant upon that subject as he is of the rules of good taste, or the principles of social order, as exhibited in his writings. Gentlemen, he is known to the public, for aught I know, exclusively by having established a periodical work called the Lancet; he tells you himself he established that work for the purpose of reporting the lectures given at the hospitals; avowing at once that he has established the work for the purpose of committing plunder upon the property of other men, as well as exposing their reputations according to his own discretion, as to the use he chose to make of reporting their lectures. But are we to hear it tolerated in a court of justice, that if Mr. Cline or Sir Astley Cooper, or any other emi- nent surgeon, should compile a course of lectures with great care and much labour, and much scientific application, and should deliver that course of lectures to the pupils of his own class at the hospital, who pay him for their attendance, and remunerate him for those labours, that a periodical paper shall rob him of all these advantages, and without his leave or licence make them public to the world, so as to give to every person in the kingdom who desires to study these things, all the advantages which the lecturer thought he had acquired for himself? That he shall establish himself by reporting the lectures of other men in a periodical work, upon which he shall get ten times as much as is gained by the lecturer, and make it useless to him to print them ? And if any one can be found so base and so ungentleman-like, as to make use of the privilege he obtains, by paying a trifling sum to attend the lecture, for the purpose of making it public, he becomes a contributor to the Lancet, he swells the revenues of the Defendant, and gives him his five or six thousand a-year, and adds to his reputation, such as it is, as a popular writer. This is what the gentleman has avowed himself. He has avowed that the Lancet is a work founded upon the principles of rob- bery and plunder, and that he obtains contributions from pupils at the