Thomas Copeland

Thomas Copeland was a British surgeon, born in May 1781, the son of the Reverend William Copeland, curate of Byfield in Northamptonshire. He studied under Mr. Denham at Chigwell and in London under his maternal uncle Edward Ford, attended the medical classes at Great Windmill Street School and St Bartholomew's Hospital, and became a member of the Royal College of Surgeons on 6 July 1804. Eight days later he was appointed an assistant surgeon in the 1st Foot Guards and went with his regiment to Spain, where he was present at the battle of Corunna in 1809. Back in London he took over his uncle's practice and published Observations on some of the principal Diseases of the Rectum in 1810, work that established his reputation and earned him the distinction of being called the founder of rectum surgery. He also wrote on diseases of the spine, became a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1834 and surgeon-extraordinary to Queen Victoria in 1837, and died at Brighton on 19 November 1855.