Joseph Cooke Verco set up at St Bartholomew's, London, in 1870s, for brilliant life in South Australian medicine
St Batholomew's Hospital in London where Joseph Cooke Verco trained and worked while achieving medical qualifications with brilliance at the University of London in the 1870s.
Image courtesy Wikipedia
Joseph Cooke Verco’s distinguished career as a South Australian physician wasn’t his certain future but his other passion, conchology, was set early. A serious boy, Verco made a museum of shells in the backyard of the family home in the Adelaide suburb of Fullarton.
Born in 1851, Verco was the sixth child of builder James Crabb Verco and his wife Ann, née Cooke, both from Cornwall, England. With the family followers of the Church of Christ, Verco was educated at John Lorenzo Young’s private Adelaide Educational Institution (1863-67), favoured by Protestant Dissenter families for their sons.
Verco left school at 16 and began work as a clerk with the South Australian Railways at Kapunda, intent of becoming a civil engineer. He quickly realised it was not the type of career he’d envisaged and decided on a career in medicine. To do this and matriculate for university, Verco needed to study the classics that Young academy's more practical curriculum didn’t provide.
Verco resumed schooling in 1869 at the Anglican St Peter’s College in Adelaide where he matriculated in 1870 and gained the Young exhibition (scholarship) for the best scholar of the year. With Adelaide not having a university, Verco left for England in 1870. He trained at St. Bartholomew’s Hospital, London, and the University of London.
A brilliant scholar, Verco won a senior scholarship (1872), and the first diploma (membership of the Royal Colleges of Surgeons of Great Britain and Ireland, MRCS) of the College of Surgeons of England (1874). He graduated with a bachelor of medicine in 1875, gaining first places in medicine and forensic medicine, and two gold medals.
He was admitted as a licentiate of the Royal College of Physicians (LRCP) and became house physician at St Bartholomew’s in 1876. He graduated as a doctor of medicine (MD) in 1876, “with proficiency in all subjects”, winning a further gold medal. A fourth gold medal was awarded for his bachelor of surgery degree in 1877. This was followed by admission to the fellowship of the Royal Colleges of Surgeons (FRCS), and appointment as midwifery assistant to St Bartholomew’s Hospital (1877).
Verco returned later in 1877 to South Australia as surgeon/superintendent of the barque Clyde.
