Oliver Cope (1902 - 30 April 1994), was an American surgeon known for his work in parathyroid surgery, burns treatment and breast cancer treatment. He is also remembered for describing the Churchill-Cope reflex. Biography Oliver Cope was born in 1902 in Germantown, Pennsylvania. He went to Haverford College in 1919, transferred to Harvard University the following year, and graduated in 1923. He then attended Harvard Medical School, graduating M.D. in 1928. His surgical training was carried out at Massachusetts General Hospital, where he became an assistant to Edward Delos Churchill. During this time he and Churchill published the findings of research which described the Churchill-Cope reflex. He married Alice DeNormandie in 1932, and was awarded a Moseley Travelling Fellowing after completing his surgical residency. The couple travelled to Europe, starting in Berlin where they witnessed Nazi persecution of Jewish academics. They left Germany and moved to London, where Cope studied under Sir Henry Dale at the National Institute of Medicine. During their time in London they developed a friendship with Harold Himsworth of University College Hospital; during the Second World War Himsworth's children stayed with the Cope family in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Parathyroid surgery Cope returned to Massachusetts General Hospital in 1934, also joining the faculty of Harvard Medical School. At that time, Edward Churchill and others such as Fuller Albright were starting to perform surgery for the treatment of hyperparathyroidism. Before carrying out surgery, Churchill asked Cope to perform dissections to study the parathyroid glands, to increase knowledge of the normal and abnormal anatomy of these glands. This led to an increase in the success of such surgery. Cope was also involved in the treatment of a patient, Captain Martell, who had previously had exploratory operations to search for parathyroid adenomas which had been unsuccessful. In 1932 Churchill, assisted by Cope, performed the first removal of a parathyroid adenoma from the mediastinum, having converted the initial neck operation to an open thoracotomy. By 1936 Churchill and Cope had successfully treated 30 patients with hyperparathyroidism operatively. Cope, also described primary hyperplasia of the parathyroid glands as a cause for hyperparathyroidism, as distinct from parathyroid adenoma. During this time Cope also became the senior surgeon at the Thyroid clinic at Massachusetts General, and wrote 20 papers on thyroid surgery. Treatment of burns By the early 1940s Cope's interest had turned to the management of patients with burns, particularly the fluid resuscitation of