A one-page advertising circular dated December 10, 1856 advertising Cooper's first course of private lectures in San Francisco. Cooper, founder of California’s (and the West Coast’s) first medical school, came to San Francisco in May 1855 and immediately embarked on an ambitious program to advance the status of medicine in the state. He not only established his own medical and surgical practice in the city (which he promoted vigorously, to the dismay of some of his rivals), but also began his own private medical teaching program (advertised in the present circular), agitated for improvements in the teaching of anatomy, helped to found both the San Francisco County Medico-Chirurgical Association and the California State Medical Society, began publishing the prestigious Pacific Medical and Surgical Journal, and in 1858 founded California’s first medical school, attached to the University of the Pacific. The medical school’s faculty originally consisted of Cooper and six others; Cooper’s nephew, Levi Cooper Lane, joined the faculty in 1859. Cooper served as professor of anatomy and surgery at the school from its inception until his death eight years later. After Cooper’s death the school went into decline, being eclipsed by the foundation in 1864 of the rival Toland Medical College, ancestor of the University of California’s medical school. In 1870 Cooper’s school was revived by Levi Cooper Lane and Henry Gibbons; in 1882 it was renamed Cooper Medical College after its founder. After several decades of independent existence, Cooper Medical College was acquired by Stanford University; Stanford University’s School of Medicine thus can trace its ancestry back to the first medical school founded on the West Coast.

Perhaps the earliest separate publication on a surgical operation issued in California.