Note 50 — SPENCER COWPER AND OTHERS
Reading edition
William Cowper (1666-1709) was a leading surgeon at the time of this trial, having been elected a member of the Royal Society in 1696, and in 1698 having published a treatise on anatomy, which led to a vigorous controversy between him and a Dutch doctor of the name Bidloo, whose anatomical plates he seems to have adopted for his own work. He subsequently published a variety of papers on surgery, and was the discoverer of Cowper's glands.