Thomas Benton Cooley

Thomas Benton Cooley (June 23, 1871 – October 13, 1945) was an American pediatrician and hematologist and professor of hygiene and medicine at the University of Michigan and Wayne State University. He was the director of the Pasteur Institute at the University of Michigan from 1903 to 1904. He worked in private practice in Detroit as the city's first pediatrician starting in 1905. He worked with the Babies' Milk Fund and helped to reduce Detroit's high infant mortality rate in the 1900s and 1910s. During World War I, Cooley went to France as the assistant chief of the Children's Bureau of the American Red Cross. He was decorated in 1924 with the cross of the Legion of Honor for his work in France. From 1921 to 1941, Cooley was the head of pediatric service at Children's Hospital of Michigan. Cooley gained acclaim for his scientific work in the field of pediatric hematology and is principally remembered for his discovery of, and research into, a form of childhood anemia that became known as Cooley's anemia. Cooley was also a professor at the Wayne University College of Medicine from 1936 to 1941.

Early years Cooley was born in Ann Arbor, Michigan, the son of Thomas McIntyre Cooley, a noted legal scholar. While Cooley was a boy, his father served variously as a professor and dean of the University of Michigan Law School, an Associate Justice and Chief Justice of the Michigan Supreme Court, and as the first chairman of the Interstate Commerce Commission. Cooley attended the Ann Arbor public schools and graduated from Ann Arbor High School. He enrolled at the University of Michigan, where he received a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1891 and Doctor of Medicine degree in 1895.

After receiving his medical degree, Cooley was an intern at the Boston City Hospital from 1895 to 1897. He returned to the University of Michigan as an instructor of hygiene from 1898 to 1900. In 1900, he left Michigan to study and visit clinics for a year in Germany. In 1904, Cooley published a report detailing the results of providing 38 patients with the Pasteur treatment. Of the 38 patients treated, 36 had been bitten by dogs, one by a cat, and one by a horse. In none of the cases did the patient develop rabies.

Babies' Milk Fund In 1905, he moved to Detroit where he practiced as a pediatrician. He served as the medical director of the Babies' Milk Fund. His efforts were credited with playing a "great role in the reduction of infant deaths from the diarrheal diseases in the early decades of the twentieth century." During the war, medical and nursing personnel "vanished from the cities" in France, leaving an absence of care for the civilian population. Cooley called the disorder "erythroblastic anemia," but it became popularly known as Cooley's anemia. Cooley presented his findings to the American Pediatric Society in 1925. The American Journal of Diseases of Children called Cooley's work "one of the outstanding contributions to hematology by an American."

In 1936, Cooley also became a professor of pediatrics at the Wayne State University College of Medicine. He was also a charter member of the American Academy of Pediatrics and a member of the American Pediatric Society; he served as president of both organizations.

Nathan & Oski summarized Cooley's approach and influence:

Cooley's influence extended well beyond the field of hematology. ... He was one of the founders of the Academy of Pediatrics and, long before the time was ripe, saw the role of pediatrics in terms of preventative medicine. Politically he was a liberal, scientifically a radical, personally a patrician. Combined with a rather haughty expression, an irrepressible wit, and an utter lack of reverence for established authority, these traits were bound to earn him enmities on the part of the town and gown alike, but his enemies respected him and his friends admired him. He was well ahead of his time, a lucid thinker and a giant in the history of pediatric hematology. The couple had a daughter, Emily Holland Cooley, and a son, Thomas McIntyre Cooley II.