Although Govard Bidloo was warned by John Hutton, a fellow physician to King William III that Cowper intended to use his illustrations for a new anatomical atlas, Bidloo did not publicly respond to the act of plagiarism until 1700. Bidloo’s pamphlet, entitled Gulielmus Cowper, criminis literarii citatus coram tribunal nobiliss was published at Leiden and directed towards the Royal Society, featuring a series of exchanges between Bidloo, Hutton, Cowper, the publishers Boom and Smith, and Bidloo’s own accusations towards Cowper. In this, Bidloo claimed that Cowper was a ‘highwayman’ and directed vindictive language towards him, degrading him by calling him a “miserably anatomist who writes like a Dutch Barber,” surely a jeer meant to insult Cowper for his past involvement in the London Company of Barber Surgeons. Within the introductory notes of the pamphlet, directed to the Royal Society, Bidloo stressed that Cowper’s act was a threat to all of the authors of arts and sciences, and that he should be expelled from the Society lest he do further harm.

            In 1701, Cowper replied to Bidloo’s aggression in Eucharista in qua dotes plurimae et singulares Godefridi Bidloo M. D. at in illustrissima Leydarum Academia anatomiae professoris celberrimi, peritia anatomica, probitas, ingenium, elegantiae latinitatis, lepores, candor, humanitas, ingenuitas, solertia, verecundia, humilitas, urbanitas, &c., celebrantur et ejusdem citatiuni humillime respondeteur. In this, Cowper disputed Bidloo’s accusations against him, arguing that the engravings were originally created for Jan Swammerdam, and that Cowper, like Bidloo, had purchased the impressions from them. There was and is little substantial evidence that supports this case however; Jan Swammerdam, a Dutch biologist that lived between 1637 and 1680, had a keener interest in the studies of microscopy and insects than he did the study of human bodies.