Dr. Saint Cloud Cooper
1860-1930

photo courtesy of Mary Smart Holland Source: Martin, Amelia, Physicians and Medicine: Crawford and Sebastian Counties, Arkansas 1817-1976, St. Cloud Cooper founded Cooper Clinic in Fort Smith on Oct. 1, 1920. In 1895, he moved to Fort Smith to practice. Born on July 13, 1861 in Jefferson, Texas, Cooper received his medical degree from Washington University in St. Louis in 1882. He received postgraduate education at Long Island College Hospital and in Boston, Chicago and Montreal. A member of the Sebastian County Medical Society, Cooper also served as its president in 1899 and 1909; president of the Arkansas Medical Society in 1915; and president of the Medical Association of the Southwest in 1916 and 1921. He wrote and published many articles in the Journal of the Arkansas Medical Society. For 15 years, Cooper was a member of the Fort Smith Board of Health and was a member of the staff of Sparks Memorial Hospital for 17 years. According to a family story, his father, Dr. John Cooper, was a surgeon in the Confederate Army and rode on horseback from Texas to Van Buren where he was discharged. St. Cloud Cooper died March 22, 1930, at his home from angina pectoris. At his death, he was survived by his wife, Dora Hudson Cooper; a son, two daughters, three sisters and a brother. The first location of Cooper Clinic was on the sixth floor of the First National Bank building on Garrison Avenue. Patterned after the Mayo Clinic, it had outgrown those offices and moved to a new building at 100 South 14th Street in 1924. X-ray equipment had been added to the clinic circa 1922, and Fort Smith's first electrocardiograph was acquired by Cooper Clinic.