In the latter part of May 1862 Dr. Cooper's neuralgic symptoms assumed an unusual violence; - they also had their usual accompaniment - indigestion. He then went to bed, with the hope that a few days rest would afford him relief; so far, however, from any improvement, he rapidly grew worse, and on the tenth day afterwards, he was attacked with amaurosis, - complete blindness coming on in a few hours; on the same day, clonic spasms, and, finally, convulsions of most violent character supervened. The convulsions were arrested by epispastic counter-irritation, conjoined with local depletion. The loss of vision, however, continued for a few days. (At the time of the convulsions he suddenly and unaccountably regained normal sensation and motor function in the paralyzed left side of his face.) ^[4] 

It is the case with most men, that, when, on the supervention of some great misfortune, they stand most in need of courage, they show the least of it. With the subject of our notice, it was very different. At no time in his life did he show so much resolution as in the cheerful submission with which he bowed to these calamities. On finding that he was blind, he said that, for one of his active habits, it was a hard fate. Yet, in an hour afterward, he remarked that, acting on the principle which he had adopted as a rule of his life of cheerfully yielding to what could not be surmounted, he was now content. This was said when he and his medical friends believed that he was hopelessly blind. It would be hard to find a similar instance of so immediate and cheerful obedience to the will of Providence.

In the course of a week he recovered his eyesight, though his vision was subsequently feeble. At the suggestion of his friends, he now sought the valley of San Jose, of which the warm and unchanging atmosphere, it was thought, would hasten his convalescence; and at the same time, along with avoiding the noise and confusion of the city, he would be wholly freed from the annoyances of professional business. For a few days the change appeared to have a most happy influence; then came again his neuralgic pains, which greatly enfeebled him. On returning to this city his friends all saw that he was far from being well. The sallow complexion and bloodless lip told of some lurking difficulty that was sapping the foundations of life.

When at home this time he ligated the femoral artery. Though so feeble that he could not walk a hundred steps without being wholly exhausted, yet his hand was perfectly steady, the incision made with as much precision as regarded the arterial relations, and the ligature applied in almost as short a space of time as if he had been in perfect health. In speaking of the operation afterwards, he observed that he thought the effort it caused him to make, as well as the momentary excitement which it gave his mind, had really a beneficial effect upon him.

A few days after this, as he did not seem to improve but rather to grow worse, he left the city a second time, and sought the highlands in the vicinity of Santa Clara. A month's residence there appeared to have improved him so much that he returned again to San Francisco. As was the case after his return from San Jose, his neuralgic symptoms came back with so much violence in the lower extremities soon after returning home, that he was confirmed in the notion he had long entertained - that his disease was kept up and aggravated by the cold, bleak winds which constantly prevail at San Francisco during the summer months. In that belief, he decided to seek the country once more with the intention, in case the change proved beneficial, not to return home again until his health was fully restored. The journey selected this time was to the mountainous regions of the Northern part of the State, as the climate there would be warm and free from those changes which occur in San Francisco.

(In this trip the route taken was through Sacramento and its lush valley, then north by a precipitous ascent along the rocky gorge of the North Fork of the Yuba River to Downieville in the heart of the Sierra gold country.) ^[5] 

During this journey, in which he was absent from the city near six weeks, I accompanied him, and during this period, was scarcely from his side an hour at a time. Then I too plainly saw what, with so much anxiety, I had long apprehended - that despite all the most thoroughly studied means of treatment to which resort had or could be made, as well as despite all the energies of his otherwise invincible will, still, all was in vain.

At times, however, he had hours of comparative ease and signs of apparent improvement. These, again, were soon succeeded by accession of violent pain, and obscure morbid complications. Hence, amidst these conflicting alterations, our minds were caused to vibrate perpetually between hope and fear, the latter continually gaining the ascendancy until, at length, it became so evident that the dark hour which destiny has fixed as the ultimate fate of all men was so near at hand, that a further indulgence in hope would be irrational. Then, with all the heroic coolness which men can display when in full possession of health and all their powers, but which often forsakes them in the hour of pain and disease, he turned his face from the world with as much composure as if he never had a name or a hope there, and gave himself up, with undisturbed tranquility, to a contemplation of the approaching shadows of death.

He then consulted with me in reference to returning home desiring, if I thought it possible, to reach there in order that he might die amidst his friends. It was decided to attempt it, he remarking at the time that "he feared he would be so long dying that he would exhaust the patience of his friends."

Four days after our arrival in San Francisco he breathed his last. He died easily, without struggle or groan. A few moments after death, his countenance lapsed into that smile of happy serenity which was so natural to it in health, but which, during the past three months, had been disturbed by anxiety and, at times, terrible suffering. During our sojourn in the North, he had an attack, resembling an apoplectiform seizure, in which he suddenly became blind, deaf, speechless, and apparently insensible. In this state he remained near four days when, on returning to consciousness, he said that, much of the time, he had suffered pain too terrible for description. After this, followed a dysenteric attack, which was no sooner controlled, than there supervened a pneumonia, of passive type, accompanied by profuse spitting of rust-colored sputa, orthopnea and dyspnea, of most painful character. The pneumonic attack placed the seal on his destiny. From it he never rallied; the little remains of life which it left him were soon expended in a painful, labored respiration consequent on an extensive pleural effusion, also seemingly of passive origin. After his return home, every breath which he took required a painful effort. Hence it was apparent to all that exhausted nature, under such a burden, must quickly sink which, as we have said, soon took place.

As his disease had assumed so multiform a character, sometimes appearing to be seated in one organ, sometimes in another - one day the brain appearing to be organically diseased, the next, merely functionally, - it was his special and urgent request that in case of his death, a careful post-mortem examination should be made, - he himself actually designating the parts where he desired the disease to be sought for. Fearing that my feelings, as his relative, might influence me to neglect this request, he repeated it to certain of his friends, obtaining a promise from them that it should be done.

In obedience to that request, a careful autopsy was made. Commencing at the brain, the vital organs were examined in order downwards. The brain was considerably congested, yet no organic lesion was found in it. The heart was enlarged, with dilatation and softening; lungs congested; extensive pleural effusion; stomach perfectly healthy; liver slightly enlarged, with some fatty degeneration; spleen much softened; pancreas with a scirrhus-like hardness at one point, otherwise healthy; a morbid fibroid structure, an inch and a quarter in diameter, hollow and containing a bile colored matter, was found in proximity with the semi-lunar ganglion; periphery of the kidneys nodulated and unhealthy in appearance - otherwise they presented nothing abnormal. It should be remarked that the medulla oblongata and upper portion of the spinal marrow were smaller than usual, presenting the aspect of having been somewhat atrophied.

Now, to deduce from the autopsy an explanation of the symptoms which were present in his mysterious and eventful disease would be difficult and perhaps impossible. Still, from the examination this much seems certain - that the prime seat of his disease was in the organic nerve-centres, whence the irritation was transmitted to the cerebro-spinal nervous system, whence it was eccentrically manifested, now in one organ, now in another, thus giving rise to these protean morbid manifestations to which allusion has been made. . .(In 1926 Professor Emmet Rixford wrote that Cooper died "most probably of nephritis." He did not state the grounds for his opinion which was presumably based on the abnormality found in the kidneys at autopsy.) ^[6] 

A word more, in reference to Dr. Cooper's character. His great and leading characteristic was singleness of idea and continuity of purpose. The profession of Medicine he loved, cultivated and was devoted to with his entire and undivided mind. From the period in which he espoused it and fully began his career, every energy of his genius was given to it with an enthusiasm which nothing save the chilling hand of death could cool. It was this too intense devotion to that profession which has sacrificed him on its altar at a period of his life when it could truly be said of him that no man ever died with more unfinished work. Still, the brevity of his life is rendered more deserving of praise from the fact that in it he has won an unfading chaplet of honor, which will give his name an enduring place among the illustrious dead of our profession.