When Peter the Doctor Invented a Medical Marvel and Dreamt Up Fred the Snake

One of Dewees Islands' longest residents, Peter Cotton has helped shape both the eco-conscious barrier island, modern gastrointestinal medicine, and a reptile with a quirky personality.

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When your name is Peter Cotton, becoming a children’s book author seems almost inevitable. So it was for the British-born Peter Cotton, but not before an illustrious career as a medical pioneer. Over his six decades as a gastroenterologist, Peter has traveled the globe, becoming a leading professor in the field of endoscopy procedures and a Delta Airlines 3 million miler. He treated kings, princesses, and movie stars and brought one of modern medicine’s most important technologies to the Western world. He’s lived in London, England; Shiraz, Iran; Chapel Hill, North Carolina; Mount Pleasant, South Carolina; and, for the last 22 years, has called Dewees Island home.

But back to that name. No, he was not named after a rabbit, he says. Peter Cottontail is a wholly American invention. However, in Peter’s native England, Beatrix Potter’s Tales of Peter Rabbit feature a bevy of bunnies named Flopsy, Mopsy, Cottontail, and Benjamin (which is also Peter’s middle name). However, until he arrived in America, Peter was unaware of his nomenclature’s even more direct connection to the world of literary animals. It has served him well, however, at least regarding gifts. Peter reports he has more than 800 bunny-themed decorations in his possession. And while he doesn’t attribute it directly, the close ties to anthropomorphic animals surely influenced his own literary creation, Fred the Snake. 

Peter reports he has somewhere over 800 bunny-themed decorations in his possession. 

An orange and yellow snake with luscious eyelashes and lipstick but no defined species, Fred was born as a bedtime story for his two children. “I was trying to teach them about crossing the road,” he tells me as we sit on the sofa in his Dewees Island home, looking out over Lake Timicau and the Atlantic Ocean. “The title was When Fred the Snake Got Squished then Mended. The story was he didn’t know how to cross the road, so he got run over by an ambulance and had to be sewn back together.” 

Peter’s children called his creation Fred-Fred because he was in two pieces for much of the book. Peter didn’t do anything with Fred-Fred until his children were grown with children of their own and asked, “What happened to Fred-Fred?” “I found the text I had written and eventually found a wonderful illustrator, Bonnie Lemaire, and I published a book,” he says. That was 10 years ago, and he published Fred’s eighth adventure this year. “Fred went to school, Fred went to the beach (on Dewees), Fred went camping, and recently he’s been visiting the cities and famous sights of the United States with his friends. Now he’s working his way around the West Coast,” says Peter, in his clipped English accent, which still carries hints of his days at Cambridge University.

The Fred the Snake series features eight books, with number nine, where Fred and friends explore the USA-West, coming soon. Order them at Amazon or signed copies at www.drpetercotton.com/shop

From Diapers to Dewees

How does a world-famous, Cambridge-educated English doctor wind up living on a tiny barrier island off the coast of Charleston, South Carolina? A lengthy, fascinating story, ultimately, it all came down to diapers. “It was 1998; we had been living in Mount Pleasant for about four years when a colleague at MUSC invited us out to dinner on the island,” recalls Peter. However, the weather took a turn, and, as the only way to get to Dewees was by boat, he and his wife, Marion, called to politely cancel. “But he absolutely insisted, said we’ve prepared this wonderful meal, you simply must come. So I said, ‘Oh, OK, if it’s that important.’ There was a pause, and he said, ‘Well, if you’re coming, please bring diapers.’”

It was the first time Peter had heard of Dewees, a private, eco-conscious community on a barrier island just north of Isle of Palms. Developed in the early 1990s, after Hurricane Hugo had largely decimated what had been there, Dewees hosts just 150 residential lots on its 1.9 square miles. Today, 70 homes have been built; Peter and Marion were among the early settlers ━ building in 2000. “We fell in love with it very quickly,” says Cotton. “It’s still Charleston’s best-kept secret.”

“We fell in love with Dewees very quickly. It’s still Charleston’s best-kept secret.”

Right on the northern tip of the island, at the end of Pelican Flight Drive, the Cottons’ house was built by Tom Sanders and Chip Narramore (who still builds on the island as Narramore Construction) and, at the time, had 360-degree views. “We could see the sunrise and the sunset, although not at the same time,” Peter recalls. In the ensuing 22 years, the trees Hugo swept away have regrown, and the island more closely resembles the maritime forest it once was. It provides valuable habitat for a delightful variety of wildlife. On our short golf cart ride from the ferry dock to the house ( no motor vehicles are allowed on the island), we saw roseate spoonbills, a great blue heron, and an enormous alligator, sunning itself next to a well-placed sign warning of active alligators in the area.

 “We could see the sunrise and the sunset, although not at the same time.” 

As an elder statesman of the island, Peter has assumed many duties, from serving on the POA board for many years and as its president to assisting Marion in running the island’s social events. Happy hour every Friday night at the Huyler house (the island’s community center), open mic night, neighbor soirees, Sunday morning boccie, and pickleball tournaments, and revolving dinner parties are just some of the social gatherings they’ve orchestrated. More deer than people may live on Dewees, but that doesn’t mean it’s dull. Peter and Marion are among only 20 or so full-time residents on the island, having relocated permanently from Mount Pleasant in May 2011 when Peter “retired” from his full-time role as director of the Digestive Disease Center at MUSC, a program he founded.

Dewees may have more deer than people living there. That doesn’t mean it’s dull.

“We are so fortunate to be part of this remarkable supportive community,” he says, recognizing it as “living in harmony with nature.” A great example of community spirit is the Memory Garden, designed and built by residents.

From Herefordshire to South Carolina

Working for The Middlesex Hospital in London at the time, Peter’s skill with this new form of diagnostic medicine that could also treat conditions without the complications and pains of surgery gained him an impressive reputation. This led to invitations to lecture all over the world, and, in 1986, following a brief stint at a hospital in Iran, Peter was offered a position at Duke University Medical Center in Durham, North Carolina. Eight years later, he was invited to start at a new department at the Medical University of South Carolina in Charleston. By this point, Peter was divorced and had married a Southern belle from Georgia, whom he had met at the Masters Tournament in Augusta. Between them, Peter and Marion have four children, and today Dewees Island is a natural draw for their large family, which includes eight grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.

Family photos of the clan enjoying summers on Dewees over the years fill many walls, bookshelves, and basically every available flat surface in the couple’s home. It’s abundantly clear that while Peter has traveled to every corner of the globe, met movie stars and royalty, and pioneered groundbreaking medical procedures, there is no place like home. And home is Dewees Island.