Edward Drinker Cope
Death

In 1896, Cope began suffering from a gastrointestinal illness he said was cystitis. His wife cared for him in Philadelphia when she was able; at other times, Cope's university secretary, Anna Brown, tended to him. Cope at this time lived in his Pine Street museum and rested on a cot surrounded by his fossil finds. Cope often prescribed himself medications, including large amounts of morphine, belladonna, and formalin, a substance based on formaldehyde used to preserve specimens. Osborn was horrified by Cope's actions and made arrangements for surgery, but the plans were put on hold after a temporary improvement in Cope's health. Cope went to Virginia looking for fossils, became ill again, and returned to his home very weak. Osborn visited Cope on April 5, inquiring about Cope's health, but the sick paleontologist pressed his friend for his views on the origin of mammals. Word of Cope's illness spread, and he was visited by friends and colleagues; even in a feverish condition Cope delivered lectures from his bed. Cope died on April 12, 1897, 16 weeks short of his 57th birthday.

Sternberg, still prospecting for Cope that spring, was woken by a liveryman who relayed word from Annie that Cope had died three days earlier. Sternberg wrote in his memoirs, "I had lost friends before, and I had known what it was to bury my own dead, even my firstborn son, but I had never sorrowed more deeply than I did over the news." Cope's Quaker funeral consisted of six men: Osborn, his colleague William Berryman Scott, Cope's friend Persifor Frazer, son-in-law Collins, Horatio Wood, and Harrison Allen. The six sat around Cope's coffin among the fossils and Cope's pets, a tortoise and a Gila monster, for what Osborn called "a perfect Quaker silence... an interminable length of time." Anticipating the quiet, Osborn had brought along a Bible and read an excerpt from the Book of Job, ending by saying, "These are the problems to which our friend devoted his life."

The coffin was loaded on a hearse and carried to a gathering at Fairfield; much of the gathering was spent in silence. After the coffin was removed, the assembled began talking. Frazer recalled that each person remembered Cope differently, and "Few men succeeded so well in concealing from anyone... all the sides of his multiform character." Osborn, intending to follow the coffin to the graveyard, was instead pulled aside by Collins and taken to the reading of Cope's will—Osborn and Cope's brother-in-law John Garrett were named executors. Cope gave his family a choice of his books, with the remainder to be sold or donated to the University of Pennsylvania. After debts were handled, Cope left small bequests to friends and family—Anna Brown and Julia received $5000 each, while the remainder went to Annie. Cope's estate was valued at $75,327, not including additional revenue raised by sales of fossils to the American Museum of Natural History, for a total of $84,600. Some specimens preserved in alcohol made their way to the Academy of Natural Sciences, including a few Gordian worms.

Cope insisted through his will that no graveside service or burial be held; he had donated his body to science. He issued a final challenge to Marsh at his death: he had his skull donated to science so his brain could be measured, hoping his brain would be larger than that of his adversary; at the time, brain size was thought to be the true measure of intelligence. Marsh never accepted the challenge.

Osborn listed Cope's cause of death as uremic poisoning, combined with a large prostate, but the true cause of death is unknown. Many believed Cope had died of syphilis contracted from the women with whom he fraternized during his travels. In 1995, Davidson gained permission to have the skeleton examined by a medical doctor at the university. Dr. Morrie Kricun, a professor of radiology, concluded no evidence of bony syphilis was found on Cope's skeleton.

Public mentions of Cope's death were relatively slight. The Naturalist ran four photographs, a six-page obituary by editor J. S. Kingsley, and a two-page remembrance by Frazer. The National Academy of Sciences' official memoir was submitted years later and written by Osborn. The American Journal of Science devoted six paragraphs to Cope's passing, and incorrectly gave his age as 46. Cope was outlived by his rival Marsh, who was suffering poor health.
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