Memoir of George McClellan, M. D.

MEMOIR

GEORGE M C CLELLAN, M.D.

I LIDF3ARY

DEC 2

V

MEMOIR

GEORGE M C CLELL AN,

A LECTURE
iJutrocwctovg to tlje (Hoarse of tl)c

THEORY AND PRACTICE OF PHYSIC,

MEDICAL DEPARTMENT

or

PENNSYLVANIA COLLEGE,

FOE, THE SESSION OF 1847-4 8.

BY W. DARRACH, M.D.

PHILADELPHIA:
KING & BAIRD, PRINTERS, 9 GEORGE STREET.
1847.

s

r

CORRESPONDENCE.

Philadelphia., Nov. 16i&, 1947.

Prof. Darrach,

Dear Sir :

At a meeting of the gentlemen composing the Class
of Pennsylvania Medical College, Mr. James H. Fislier of Delaware, in the chair, and
Mr. A. Reeves Jackson of Pennsylvania, Secretary; the undersigned were appointed a
Committee to request a copy of your able, and truly eloquent tribute to the memory of
McClellan, for publication.

In performing this most agreeable duty, the committee beg leave to express to you
their most heartfelt sympathies, and to lament with you, the melancholy loss of him who
called you friend, and whom we proudly acknowledge as the Founder of our School.
Very respectfully,

We remain yours, etc.,

JAMES H. FISHER, Delaware.
A. REEVES JACKSON, Pennsylvania.
GEORGE MURR AY, Nova Scotia.
WILLIAM JONES, Delaware.
JAMES HENDERSON, Pennsylvania.
ABRAHAM SEITZ,

CHARLES G. STROIIECKER, Illinois.
JOHN L. WOOLFOLK, Virginia.
JAMES HUNTER, New Brunswick.
ARTHUR B. WILLIAMS, Michigan.
SIMON SCHOCK, Pennsylvania.
DRAPER W. NEWTON, New York.
GEORGE W. PATRICK, Indiana.
W. LACROIX ROBINSON, Canada West.
ALLEN WARD, New Jersey.
JOSEPH F. ADOLPIIUS, Jamaica, W. I.
JOHN ROBERTSON, Ireland.
THOMAS A. PEIRCE, Maine.
ELIJAH W. CUNNINGHAM, Tennessee.
CHARLES LEIGHTON, Ohio.

Philadelphia, JVo». 17(A, 1847.

Gentlemen :

With great pleasure and ardent wishes for your prosperity individually, I
promptly comply with your complimental request.

Personally, your proud acknowledgement of the late much lamented Doctor Ceoroe
McClellan, as the Founder of the School of your choice, is a gratifying confirmation
of the judgment of the present Faculty : And representing, as you do in a very interesting
sense to us, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Canada West, Jamaica, W. I., Ireland, and not
less than eleven of our United States, the concession on the part of the class of 1847-8, is
a tribute to McClellan which far surpasses the feeble and imperfect effort of
Your very respectful and humble servant,

W. DARRACH.

To Messrs. Fisher, Jackson, Murray, Jones.
Henderson, and others,

1

MEMOIR.

In obedience to our Faculty, I appear before you,
Gentlemen, to pay a tribute to the memory of the
Founder of the Medical Department of Pennsylvania
College; — the late, much lamented Doctor George
McClellan. He died on Sunday morning between
twelve and one o'clock, on the 9th of last May, at his
late residence, No. 248, Walnut street, in the fifty-first
year of his age.

On the day previous to his death, he visited his patients
as usual, and held a consultation in an important surgi-
cal case with Doctor Horner. In the afternoon of the
same day, he was attacked with violent pain in the gas-
tric region and with vomiting. At eight o'clock, P. M.
his lower extremities became cold and insensible. A
little after midnight he ceased to breathe.

During the last year or more of his life, his counte-
nance and frequent indisposition manifested that he
was sustaining himself against chronic disease by his
extraordinary strength and activity of mind and spirit.
Autopsy discovered this disease to be ulceration of the
mucous coat of the bowels, and that the immediate cause
of his sudden death was an ulcerated opening a few
inches below the sygmoid flexure of the colon.

At the earliest period after the sad intelligence
reached us, we met, and among the expressions of con-

dolence, resolved that his memoir be made, by the Pre-
sident of the Faculty, the subject of the opening intro-
ductory of the present course.

I may properly understand this resolution to mean a
tribute of the heart from, not only the present Faculty
of this school, but also from its former and primary one
of which Doctor McClellan was a distinguished mem-
ber; and from her alumni and pupils; and from the
parent institution.

We all lament the death of McClellan ! — At evening
we come together, with slow and silent steps, to plant
the yew, the cypress, and the weeping willow, sa-
cred to the memory of departed worth ; and also, most
gladly, to wreathe the amaranth and the laurel for his
brow. I feel that, in truth, I may most safely venture to
be, on this occasion, a mouth of condolence and praise
for such as you. I have long known McClellan; —
longer, indeed, than any member of the profession out-
side of his family, except our mutual friend Doctor
Beesley. We have ever loved him ; and have always
appreciated and admired his genius, his acquirements,
and his numerous, extraordinary, bold and successful
operations in surgery.

My task is limited to a tribute to the memory of
McClellan. More than this, I leave to those who
are gifted with the rare talent of constructing human
character from moral actions ; and, with reverence be
it spoken, to the Wise and Gracious Master who, in
respect to all his servants, keeps the full record of their
deeds, and alone is able to discover the main-spring of
human conduct.

In that record, doubtless, there is full proof that
McClellan was, at least, not a slothful servant. Inac-
tion, with its consequent vice of procrastination, was
not his characteristic. His acts in relief of suffering

7

were numerous, free, spontaneous as the stream of an
unfailing spring. Some of them are engraven on the
hearts of many who enjoy life from his bold and pioneer-
ing surgery; some are tissued in the growth of American
surgery; some in the diffusion and enlargement of medi-
cal education ; many arc but imperfectly recollected ;

^ and a multitude are, by the oblivious sand which the

current of time deposits, covered up — not lost. There
is an eternal memory of human deeds, which, when
done in obedience to the Master's command, " Go
heal the sick," will graciously obtain the praise of
" Well done, good and faithful servant," and the in-
vitation, surpassing all invitations, " enter thou into the
joy of thy Lord."

George McClellan was born at Woodstock, Wind-

y, ham County, State of Connecticut, on the 22& day

of December, 1796.

His race is Scottish — highland Scotch. We trace
his family to Kircudbright on the Galway, and back to
the eventful period which terminated the Scottish
monarchy. McClellan, at that time, a century back, was
a clansman, wrapt in his tartan, a garb which has ever
been associated with a martial spirit, and in contrast
with oppression.

His great-grandfather, bold, generous and intrepid,

j after having, with his fellow Highlanders, espoused

the desperate cause of Charles Edward and fought
in the disastrous battle of Culloden, emigrated to
this country, and settled in Massachusetts, in or near the
town of Worcester. His son was General Samuel
McClellan, of the Revolution. He settled and accumu-
lated a large property in the township of Woodstock,
Connecticut. By two marriages, he was the father of
seven sons and two daughters ; who, by intermarriages,
have become connected with most of the older leading

8

families of New England, and have scattered the pater-
nal name over the country, a name distinguished in
the political and military world.

James McClellan, Esq., the father of Doctor Mc-
Clellan, was born in Woodstock, Sept. 20th, 1773. He, '
also, was distinguished for energy and intelligence ; and,
as a very extensive wool-grower, was devoted to the
manufacturing interests of our country. He married
early in life into a family of English descent, by the
name of Eldredge, many branches of which were settled
throughout Connecticut, and took an active part in the
war of Independence. The Doctor's mother lost, at
the storming of Groton, near New London, eleven
near relatives, immediately killed or mortally wounded.
His maternal grandfather served throughout most of the
war, as an officer of the Continental army. He was
present at the battle on Long Island, and at the evacu-
ation of New York. This ancestral statement shows
that the McClellan spirit has been martial ; and the fact,
that Lieut. George McClellan, the son of the late Doctor
McClellan, is now an officer of the Sappers and Miners,
and, with his company, has been in all the actions in the
valley of Mexico that preceded the armistice, and have
since terminated in the capture of that city, demonstrates
that the valiant spirit of the highland Scotch still con-
tinues to exist.

A humane rather than a martial spirit becomes the
physician, yet oftentimes presence, boldness, and in-
trepidity are his essential requisitions. McClellan had
much of these opposite qualities. Human character, it is
true, results from education ; and its excellence depends
on that Power which constrains into the straight and
narrow path of self-denial and obedience : nevertheless,
the force, direction, and result of specific 'character
depend upon physical organization, which, unsuppressed

9

or unperverled, continues to show itself the same,
generation after generation. That of McClellan was
Gaelic mixed with the Anglo-Saxon stock. From his
paternal Gaelic stock, he inherited his restless, gener-
ous, intrepid spirit ; and from his maternal Anglo-Saxon
stock, he obtained his strong, sagacious mind. Hence
it is that McClellan, like the elm tree, possessed those
two opposite and rarely combined golden qualities of
firmness and flexibility, so essential to greatness of
character.

A large, symmetrical head, thick black hair, strong
brow, stout and projecting chin, and high cheek hone,
were blended with a deeply set, quickly glancing, mild
blue eye; with an impulsive motion of his muscles, in-
duced by a mind enthusiastically occupied with bold,
humane acts; and with a compressed yet smiling mouth
— a manly smile at purpose formed or accomplished,
which did not relax even in death. We beheld it in
the corpse, on the funeral day, as strongly as any of us
ever witnessed it in his living face. When we looked
on then, and whilst many had cut oflf portions of his
dark locks, slightly grey, we experienced, beside the
sadness of the occasion, a feeling of,— shall I call it,—
surprise ! that that rapid mind, rapid tongue, and rapid
hand and foot, were now at last for once still, and that
warm and generous heart cold.

McClellan, thus gifted with sterling qualities of body,
mind and heart, was educated by a succession of master
spirits; — his father, the distinguished Principal of
the Woodstock Academy, and subsequently Dwight,
Silliman, Hubbard, Dorsey, Physick, Wistar and
Chapman !

His primary studies were pursued at the academy of
his native township, under the patronage of his father,
a principal stockholder, and who fully appreciated the

10

importance of a thorough system of education. At this
excellent institution, George made unusual progress,
manifesting the same energy and rapidity which charac-
terized him in after life. He excelled at sports, as did
his father, hy reason of a remarkable strength and
quickness of sight and an unequalled unison in the
movements of his hand and eye. It is related of him,
as illustrative of this happy unison which, by cultiva-
tion, became of inestimable value in his surgical opera-
tions, that on one occasion, although he had never
previously fired a pistol, he, in several successive shots,
did not once miss the mark.

This gift manifested itself at a yet earlier period.
When a child, he became expert at a practice of trans-
fixing minute objects by darting a pointed instrument at
them. To such acts of childhood, he has attributed
much of his surgical character, his remarkable rapidity
in taking up arteries ; his trueness in striking upon
arteries and other important parts with the point of the
knife ; and his instantaneous and true manner of passing
the needle and cataract knife into the eye.

I may here add an anecdote in evidence of an early
application of his dexterity to surgery. A servant of
his uncle, from an accident, had a fracture with displace-
ment of bone and profuse haemorrhage. The family
physician, living at a distance, was immediately sent for.
George, in the meanwhile, was at the case, set the bone
and bandaged. The professional gentleman, on arrival,
had only to say, in compliment to the lad, that he had
supplanted him and made his visit useless. This way,
be it right or wrong, George has had through life. In
the fall of 1S12, McClellan entered the Sophomore class
of Yale College, at the age of sixteen years — an early
age to be a Yale sophomore. This is an apparently
trifling circumstance, but it gave George the disadvan-

n

tageous position, of being by far the youngest in the
class — a lad among young men, many of whom have
since become distinguished in society. He was a small,
well set, active youth among them, with thickly curled
black hair, whom they called Little Mac. Nevertheless,
despite of his youth, and the want of that mental disci-
pline which age gives, and which his older classmates
possessed, he coped with them by reason of a strong
memory, quickness of perception, clear and rapid mode
of thinking, and ardent feelings.

Yale College was at that time under the presidency
of the celebrated Doctor Dwight, and enjoyed the zeal-
ous labours of Professor Silliman. To the latter of
these distinguished and learned men, and to his depart-
ment of studies, McClellan hecame peculiarly attached.
It is now more than thirty years since Silliman and
McClellan were preceptor and pupil, yet the former in
his condolence at the premature death of the latter, dis-
tinctly remembers " his zealous devotion to chemistry,
mineralogy, and geology. He excelled in a knowledge
of those branches. In continuance," says Professor
Silliman, " he attached himself to me both as his in-
structor and friend. I was ever happy to have him
with me on all occasions, and especially in excursions
to investigate the mineralogy and geology of the vicinity
of New Haven. Such was his zeal, that he was willing
to load himself with minerals on his pedestrian tours ;
one of which, during a college vacation, for the purpose
of observing and collecting minerals, was from New
Haven to Woodstock, by the circuitous route of the
coast, New London, Norwich, &c," being three-
fourths of the circuit of the state.

In 1815, at the early age of eighteen years, he ob-
tained his Baccalaureate at Yale, with a high reputation
for his knowledge, especially of the natural sciences.

12

Immediately on graduating, McClellan applied himself
to the study of medicine, and entered the office of the
late Doctor Thomas Hubbard, of Pomfret, one of the
most distinguished surgeons of Connecticut, and subse-
quently, the Professor of Surgery in the Medical Col-
lege of New Haven. He remained a year with him. In
1817, he came to Philadelphia to attend the Medical
Lectures, confined at that time to the University of
Pennsylvania ; and to become the private pupil of the
late lamented Doctor John SyngDorsey, the nephew and
associate of the celebrated Doctor Physick. Dorsey
was the Professor of Materia Medica and, at the time
of his unexpected death, of Anatomy in the place of
the distinguished and beloved Doctor Wistar.

Dorsey's Elements of Surgery was the popular text
book to his uncle's invaluable lectures on surgery, to
which chair Dorsey himself had been an adjunct. The
Professor and the community, therefore, regarded
Dorsey as the chosen one to advance surgery from
where Physick might leave it. But it appears that, in
Providence, it was not Dorsey, but the New England
youth in his office who, after Physick, was to become
the great surgeon, and to make the then coming age a
McClellan-cpoch in American Surgery ; as the then pass-
ing one was Physick's. Physick and Dorsey both pre-
dicted the future eminence of McClellan. The saga-
cious Doctor Physick pointed out McClellan when a
pupil, as a remarkable young man, who would soon rival
his masters in professional eminence and fame !

It was in 1818, during McClellan's pupilage under
Doctor Dorsey, that my intimate acquaintance with him
began ; occurring as follows. As one of the resident
medical students of the Hospital of the Philadelphia
Alms House, I was making a morning routine of the
medical wards, when an arm was shot into the bend of

13

mine in the most confiding manner. I recoiled for a
moment, I confess, at such apparent obtrusiveness. I
wist not that the stranger was McClellan ! — one to be
highly esteemed by the Medical world, destined to be
one of the mighty men in surgery ; to sustain, after
Physick, the chirurgical character of Philadelphia ; in
order to the making of a national reputation, to co-ope-
rate with Warren of Boston, Mott of New York,
Smith of Baltimore, and Dudley of the West ; to rank
with Chelius of Germany, Velpeau of France, Liston
of England, and Carmichael of Ireland. Through
ignorance and uncharitableness, I did not then discern
him. But now I know in review, that that first salute,
apparently abrupt and obtrusive % was, in fact, courte-
ous, pleasant and intelligent,— that which honored and
benefited, infused a more fixed purpose and more pro-
fessional zeal, raised to a better position whence to
perceive more extensive relations. I became knit to
him. By an unanimous election of the Board he became
one of us— Beesley, Freeman, McClellan and myself.
We became associated as senior and junior to manipu-
late and prescribe together. Often has he enabled me
to make a new and truer diagnosis, and suggested a
more efficient therapeutics.

Indulge me, gentlemen, here in giving more of my per-
sonal testimony. McClellan's language was ever chaste
and conciliating. He was the spirit and delight of the
house. Ever advancing in medical knowledge and ever
communicating, he became our daily mental stimulus.
His unrivalled unison of eye and hand, has been men-
tioned ; with equal truth I notice also his equally re-
markable unison of a rapid mind and tongue. At his
meals nor in his bed can I recall to mind McClellan !
My associations of him relate to his rapid walkings—

14

rapid and constant talkings, his perpetual prescribings,
manipulates, experiments ; his autopsies and opera-
tions, rapid ! rapidly at it, and always at it ! Book alter
book on medicine, he constantly and rapidly read and
clearly and pleasantly detailed, making us listen to him.
He provoked us to physiological experiments. Each
corpse in the dead-house was marked by his autopsy
and surgical operations ;— thus he sometimes made
trouble, easily quieted though, for the people even
then seemed intuitively to know that McClellan was ap-
pointed to be their head Doctor, in spite of all the great
doctors ; and they let McClellan do any thing. In
surgical matters he was ever active, testing and trying
whatever he had read, or heard of. On one occasion, I
well remember, that, while reading, he jumped from his
chair, and exclaimed, " Mott of New York," it is said,
« has taken up the innominata for aneurism, and I believe
it !" Having immediately afterward left us a while and
then returned, he exultingly exclaimed, "I've done it!"
He had gone to the dead-house and there imitated Mott s
operation on the subject. Such, in 1819-20, at the age
of twenty-two years, was the deportment of McClellan
in the Philadelphia Alms House.

Who of her students has more relieved the sickness
among the poor of the county of Philadelphia? He had
under his care, as junior, exclusively of other medical
cases, fifty, sixty and seventy cases of typhus fever
daily ; and at the same time he was keeping a cat-watch
on the phases of the numerous forms of syphilis, which
filled the wards from the breaking up of the American
army after the peace of 1814.

Who has reaped more experience from such varied
and extensive clinic? made more autopsies? imitated
on the subject more major operations, read more her

15

medical library? It used to be our complimental query :
what author in it, McClellan, have you not examined ?
Such is my personal testimony of McClellan.

In the spring of 1819, he received his Doctorate from
the University of Pennsylvania. The subject of his
Thesis was "the tying of arteries ;" a manly and prac-

V tical production, subsequently published as a source of

professional information. Among the Alumni of
this venerable institution, who has better fulfilled his
commission, and done her more honor?

He was well armed against disease. He depended
upon his own manly exertions and talents. On these
alone he stood before the world. His conduct was open,
frank and uncompromising. He served the deepest in-
terest of humanity, alleviating anguish and curing disease.

' He sought the sick, and soon they sought him, both be-

coming inseparable from each other. To McClellan, an
office, putting out a Doctor's-tin, setting-up for prac-
tice, and office-waiting for it were irrelevant. He
practised any where and every where. Within the
year of his graduation, he successfully treated a case of
spina ventosa of the lower-jaw, performed the breaking
up and couching operations for cataract; and shortly
afterward, the extraction of the lens.

In 1821, he married into one of the most influential

X families of Philadelphia, and became established

as a practitioner, before whom was an open path
of usefulness and honor. As such we find him keeping
house, and enjoying domestic happiness at the corner of
Walnut and Swanwick streets, on the latter of which
he had arranged an office and a lecture-room. His now
happy life, so far from abating, stimulated his profes-
sional zeal. He became most actively engaged in
general practice and in delivering courses of lectures
on Anatomy and Surgery.

16

His mind was eminently practical, and furnished
with an extraordinary fund of knowledge in his favour-
ite pursuit; and, as a lecturer, he displayed that same
vivacity of manner which has characterized him through
life, and he became an attraction to medical students.
His attentive class consequently became very soon so
numerous as to require for their accommodation a larger
room.

Thus began a life of public usefulness, which con-
tinued unceasingly for more than twenty-eight years, the
labours of which admit of the following classification :
viz. — First, his surgical operations, which surpassed
those of his cotemporaries in number, novelty, and bold-
ness. Second, his efforts with the legislature and with
Jefferson and Pennsylvania Colleges, to establish medi-
cal departments in Philadelphia. Third, his public
and private clinical, anatomical, and surgical instruc-
tions in the office and in two medical schools. Fourth,
his authorship as a Journalist, and a Writer on the
principles and practice of surgery.

The amount of these labours cannot be estimated nor
fully appreciated. It implies, however, a most assidu-
ous and humane exercise, and, to a considerable ex-
tent, improvement, of the healing art. This inference
being proven, George McClellan becomes a historical
medical character. He shines brightly on the page of
medical history, an honour to his family, his native
state, his almas matres, our city, and we proudly own
him as the Founder of our School.

We demand for the founder of our school, the late
Doctor George McClellan, a place, honourable, perpet-
ual among those who, by their worthy deeds, have be-
come historical medical characters; and will attempt to
show his claim to this high place by what he has been
as a surgeon, a medical instructor, and founder of medi-

17

cal schools. This admitted, and the alumni of his
schools are ranked as (adeundem) in all medical institu-
tions, here and every where. First, then, McClellan
as the surgeon.

The pre-eminent surgeon among us, when McClellan
began his rapid career, was the late Doctor Philip Syng
Physick. Having practically, as a dresser, learned the
principles of Hunter, in St. George's hospital, London,
and having introduced and successfully practised, taught
and diffused them among us, Physick became the ac-
knowledged father of American surgery. By correct
medico-chirurgical doctrines, he rebuked the malprac-
tice in the country, and by his peculiarly ingenious and
judicious use of rest, position, and diet, prevented not
un frequently resort to the use of surgical operations.

There were instances then, however, of human suffer-
ing, and which doubtless have since increased in num-
ber, which demanded a bolder surgery lhan appears in
Dorsey's Elements, and the operations and lectures of
Physick. Cases such as those of Mary Rice, Dr.
Graham, Brook, Wagonseller and Rhinehart, were not
reached by American, some of them not by European
surgery. The surgery of Physick's day was lithotomy
with the gorget; and subordinate^ to it, as major ope-
rations, were performed the extraction of the opake
lens; the tying of the carotid and internal iliac arte-
ries ; the extirpation of the entire mamma with the
axillary glands; the division, in strangulated femoral
hernia, of the stricture, then erroneously supposed to
be seated in the inner single edge of the external ob-
lique muscle of the abdomen, and since demonstrated
to be seated lower down on the thigh, and made by the
sigmoid flexure of the fascia lata. A case of ampu-
tation at the shoulder joint outside of army surgery,
may be added to the major surgery of the time in this

2

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country. The idea of removing the entire limb was not
then conceived. Such an operation did not belong to that
day's surgery. By reason of a false anatomical associ-
ation, the clavicle and scapula were regarded almost as
much a part of the trunk as the ossa innominata; and
therefore the removal of the two former bones was no
more imagined than that of the latter. Two accidental
cases had occurred previous to 1820, one of them in
the French army and the other by machinery, in which
the collar bone and shoulder blade were torn off with
the arm, without producing a mortal shock, the laceration
healing kindly, and recovery being established. Dr.
Mussey, of Cincinnati, it is true, removed the said
bones in a secondary operation; but McClellan was
the first one to induce and apply the principle of resec-
tion of the entire prehensile member.

His case, exhibited in preparation No. 321 of the
pathological cabinet of our museum, is an enormous
fungus haematodes involving the shoulder joint. Without
precedent, he made the resection of the scapula and
clavicle ; breaking thereby new ground, extending the
bounds of American surgery, and leading recently in
this school to an unexpected improvement in amputation
above the shoulder joint.* Who, besides McClellan, to
meet the emergency, would have summoned to the help
of humanity his scientific confidence, intrepidity, and
disinterestedness?

McClellan, in 1823, extirpated the inferior maxillary
bone. The case was that of a frightful osteo-sarcomatous
tumour, filling and protruding from the mouth. It in-
volved the lower jaw bone to the condyles, and being

* See amputation above the shoulder-joint in the case of Dr. Wagonsel-
ler, published in the American Journal of Medical Sciences, by Professor
Gilbert.

19

raised above the level of the teeth, prevented not only
the functions of mastication, deglutition and speech,
but also the introduction of food into the mouth.
This deplorable condition was aggravated by constant
pain, and doomed the sufferer in the morning of life,
with precocious intellect, to premature death by pain
and starvation. The drawing before you exhibits the
case in July, 1823, when McClellan was called to exa-
mine and decide on it. He operated. The operation
was as rapid as bold, occupying only four minutes and
a half. This drawing exhibits the extirpated tumour
and jaw ; and this preparation is the removed cancerous
mass. After the parts had been carefully inspected,
the huge flap or pouch of skin was replaced ; its cavity
partly filled with patent lint bent into the shape of the
removed circle of bone, and the whole properly band-
aged. The dressing was no sooner completed, than the
tongue resumed its natural situation, and, to the great
delight and astonishment of all the family, the little suf-
ferer began to articulate with considerable distinctness ;
called for water, and drank a moderate quantity from a
common cup. In three weeks the parts were entirely
healed. From the cut surfaces of the condyles shot out
a luxuriant crop of granulations, which finally became
ossified to the distance of about one inch in front of the
angles, forming a solid support for the soft parts below
the cheeks. The new flesh beneath the apex of the tongue
also became indurated into a ligamentous mass, giving
firmness to the integuments, and bolstering out the
chin to its natural prominence. The induration of this
ligamentous matter eventually became so great as to be
a substitute for bone, to which the muscles contracted
adhesions, so that the patient masticated common food.
In less than five weeks the child became robust and
fleshy, went to school in good spirits, articulated accu-

20

rately, and her countenance, as is shown by this draw-
ing, resumed its natural appearance. But after several
months, cancerous disease appeared in the glands and
new parts, to terminate the life of this interesting patient.
This issue is truly sad : nevertheless, the operation
bespeaks the great surgeon.

McClellan's medico-chirurgical judgment, though cen-
sured and unsupported at the time, was correct. The
censure was based on the belief that ossification pro-
ceeds from successive depositions within the periosteum ;
and that therefore bone, if by any surgical operation or
otherwise removed with the periosteum, cannot be rege-
nerated. McClellan's reasoning on the case was, that as
granulations become vessels, nerves, and muscles, they,
in their appropriate place, will become tendon, ligament,
and also bone. The cases of Decker, Guernesy, Bel-
main, Rargerus, Else and Mott were on record, show-
ing that ossification had followed the removal of portions
of the lower jaw. These facts, which had remained a
long time isolated and useless, sustained his reasoning,
and were enough to free his generalizing mind from the
prevailing error on the subject of the reproduction of
bone ; and enabled him to enrich the profession with
the principle that the inferior maxilla is reformed from
an old fragment, without a pre-existing periosteal mem-
brane, and to establish it by an operation bolder than
those of his predecessors, performed by him subse-
quently several times with entire success.

A third point of improvement in surgery by McClel-
lan, is that of not shocking the system in the extirpation
of large or deep-seated tumours, by the serious prelimi-
nary operation of tying a main artery, as for example
the carotid, when its branches are involved in the
disease.

Convinced that this practice, induced by a physiologi-

21

cal error, was useless and injurious ; and that haemor-
rhage was more dependent on the inosculation than the
arborescence of vessels, or at least equally so, he de-
termined to save the constitution of his patients from so
grave and useless a hazard. " To tie up," says he, "the
carotid artery, before the performance of an operation,
can only prove that the life of the patient is able to re-
sist a double hazard, while his surgeon is gaining all the
advantages which can be realized from such a precau-
tion." Again, continued he, "when we have ascertain-
ed that at least as many successful operations of the
same kind have been performed without interfering with
the main arteries, it can hardly be expected that we
should agree to the necessity or even propriety of such a
preliminary." And further, " I have extirpated almost all
the glands about the throat in succession, — the whole of
the inferior maxillary and sublingual, — the lower portion
of the parotid and many of the neighbouring lymphatic
glands ; repeatedly have I had occasion to expose the
carotid artery and jugular vein ; and have even dissected
away tumours from the very coats of these vessels with-
out encountering any immediate danger or subsequent
inconvenience."

Among other cases, may be noticed, as illustrative of
practice on this principle, that of Mr. Joseph Brown of
Orange county, New York. He was afflicted with an
enormous carcinomatous tumour, extending from the
lower part of the right cheek over a large part of
the throat, complicated with fistula, caries of the lower
maxillary bone, and enlarged lymphatic glands. This
case, in the judgment of the profession here and
in Europe, demanded a previous interference with the
carotid. But McClellan, in the presence of his fellow
professors and the students of Jefferson Medical College,
successfully operated in accordance with, and in estab-

22

lishment of his new principle of not making a preceding
serious shock on the system by securing the main
artery.

This improvement in surgery was rendered the more
valuable by being associated with another which was a
peculiar characteristic of McClellan's surgery ; viz., the
prevention of haemorrhage by a practical application of
the principle of laceration. He put the larger arteries
involved in his operation into the condition of those of
a lacerated wound, by stripping them off by a quick and
dexterous sigmoid motion of his forefinger. He thus
saved the time occupied in taking up arteries and applying
ligatures, lessened pain, and rendered bis terrific opera-
tions rapid and almost bloodless. It was McClellan's
ambition to put aside the knife, and as much as possible,
to substitute its handle and his fingers. By these
bloodless means he would rapidly separate adherent
cellular tissue, and effect at the same moment a severing
and torsion of the arteries.

These new principles and methods of McClellan in
surgery came all into play in his famous operations on
the parotid gland and superior maxillary bone. These,
more than any other of his numerous and bold opera-
tions, have surprised and astonished the profession ; and
have made him the subject of admiration and praise in
America and Europe.

In respect to the diseased parotid gland, McClellan
is not only the surgeon, who, for the first time in the
United States, has completely and allowedly removed
it ; but who also by no less than eleven successful
performances of this surgical feat — more by far than
any other surgeon of his own or former days, — has
established medical opinion in favour of its utility and
practicability.

Permit me, gentlemen, to occupy a few moments of

23

your time in an exposition of this grand operation, and
of McClellan's pre-eminent relation to it. The com-
plete extirpation of a diseased parotid gland was con-
sidered an impossibility. The under portion of this
gland is deeply seated and compacted in among im-
portant muscles and bones appertaining to the brain,
the organs of hearing, mastication, deglutition and
speech. Through its substance pass the external
carotid artery and the great nerve of expression and
respiration. When carcinomatous, it becomes jammed
into deep-seated cavities having bony margins : its en-
tire removal by surgery, therefore, was regarded as one
of the impossibilities. Its extirpation had however,
been performed in Europe, but not without exciting-
remark and surprise. Says Bordeu of Heister, " We
wonder at his skill and courage to extirpate the paro-
tid gland." The cases of Aerel, Siebold and Sour-
crampe, are recorded as surgical exploits. The intrepid
John Bell ventures to express the belief that " it might be
performed." Abernethy endeavours to strengthen the
yet unformed belief respecting it, by referring to Good-
land's communication. Carmichael remarks on a case
operated on, that " it proves the practicability of extir-
pating said gland." Sir Astley Cooper, the surgeon-in-
chief of his day, remarks in a letter to Mr. Kingsbury,
as a matter of moment, that he had " the last year twice
extirpated the parotid." As late as 1824, the distin-
guished Beclard considered it necessary to certify with
his associates, and to confirm it by autopsy, that in a
fatal case the entire gland had been removed by him.

McClellan's merit in this matter may be concisely
set forth as follows.

In 1826, a medical gentleman from Europe became
a patient of Doctor McClellan. He was afflicted with
a diseased parotid, excruciating pain, and a chronic

24

ophthalmia. As he had been already under the care of
a distinguished European surgeon, there was no doubt
of the diagnosis. The point for decision was the prac-
ticability of extirpation. The tumour had on its surface
the scar left from a failure to remove it from, supposed
insurmountable difficulties. The operation, owing to
Beclard's recent failure, was in disrepute; and a medi-
cal error was commonly entertained respecting its
inutility and impracticability. To these discouraging
circumstances ore to be added the inherent difficulties
of the operation, viz., the serious implication of the
carotid artery, that of the seventh pair of nerves, the
constricting bony margin made anteriorly by the
ramus of the lower jaw and posteriorly hy the mastoid
process and external meatus of the ear; the diseased
mass jammed by its processes into a deep expanding
cavity in such a manner as to be in contact with the
walls of the pharynx, the styloid process and its muscles,
the internal carotid artery and jugular vein, and the
hypoglossal nerve.

Here was a formidable case, though not to McClellan
an impossibility. It was one full of danger and intrica-
cies — one which demanded dexterity, presence of mind,
accurate anatomical and physiological knowledge, medi-
cal resources and surgical expediences. McClellan
had attained only his twenty-eighth year of age, and only
his seventh year in the profession, yet he determined to
operate. Having denuded the tumour, he cut down upon
the zygoma and the masseter muscle before, and upon the
external meatus and mastoid process behind; divided
the posterior belly of the digastricus, and burrowed
under the lower extremity of the mass, in order, by a
leverage of his finger, to wrench the tumour from its
bed. He then with his thumb and finger tore off, by a
sigmoid motion, the trunk of the external carotid from

25 •

its place of entrance into the tumour, and so he treated
the descending vein. After a momentary gush of blood
there was, without ligature or previous securing of the
carotid, no more haemorrhage. Having then divided
the strong bands of cellular tissue and adherent fibres
of the styloid muscle, he, by powerful and repeated
efforts at wrenching, elevated the whole mass above
the mastoid process and ramus of the jaw. The greatly
enlarged trunk of the portio dura was then seen emerg-
ing from under the mastoid process, and mounting over
the posterior margin of the tumour, to enter its sub-
stance near its anterior surface. The unnatural tension
of this nerve produced such agony, that the patient fell
into convulsions and syncope. The division of the
nerve instantly removed these symptoms, when the con-
junctiva became deeply injected with extravasated
blood. The operation was then completed by separat-
ing the upper portion of the tumour from the zygoma,
and dividing and securing the main trunk of the tempo-
ral artery. The cavity of the wound was much larger
at the bottom than at the surface. Its depth was four
and a half inches, and at its bottom were exposed the
walls of the pharynx and other important parts. The
lips of the wound being brought together, kindly healed.

The patient recovered, returned to Europe, and sub-
jected the seat of the operation to the careful examina-
tion of Sir Astley Cooper and Mr. Abernethy, and
obtained their joint opinion in the following words :
"That no doubt can exist that the whole parotid gland
has been removed." McClellan has subsequently per-
formed, as has been mentioned, ten similar operations,
of which only one was fatal. Since which, it has been
successfully performed by Drs. Randolph and J. B.
McClellan; and very recently by Dr. Pancoast, making
the fourteenth extirpation of the parotid gland which

.26

has occurred in Philadelphia — a greater number than
has occurred in any other American or European city.

McClellan's last surgical feat was the resection of the
upper maxillary bone. The disease was scirrhoma.

He operated June loth, 1846, assisted by Drs
Atlee, Morton, and his son, Dr. J. B. McClellan
Two integumental incisions were made ; one extend
ing from the left angle of the mouth to the temple,
across the zygoma, the other from the inner canthus
to a point in the line of the first incision, about half
an inch above the angle of the mouth. The two flaps
being removed from the tumour and bony processes,
the maxillary bone was cut through at the base of
the nostril on the left of the vomer, by means of the
saw and Liston's bone forceps. Then were made the
sections of the nasal process at the inner canthus, the
sutural end of the frontal process and the zygomatic
process. The soft parts of the eye were subsequently
detached from the orbitar process, and the soft from
the bony palate. These numerous soft and bony sepa-
rations having been thus rapidly made, and that without
a cowardly and cruel preliminary taking up of carotid
and other arterial trunks, McClellan boldly seized
immediately with his hand, the whole cancerous mass
thus detached by saw, forceps, scalpel and fingers, from
nostril, eye and malar bone, and tore it from the re-
maining attachment to the pterygoid processes of the
sphenoid, the deep-seated keystone bone of the skull.
All came away without further difficulty. The horrid
cavity, after proper inspection of the soft and bony
parts, and the tying of a small artery, was stuffed with
lint, and the flaps replaced and secured. The patient,
though he fainted during the dressing, bore the operation
with great fortitude. He has since recovered and is
doing well.

27

The appalling haemorrhage to be expected in this
operation, may be estimated by Lizar's statement of it
in his first and ineffectual attempt to operate. "I was
prevented from succeeding," says he, " by the hecmor-
rhagic disposition of the gums and palate. My patient
lost, in a few seconds, upwards of two pounds of blood,
welling out at every incision as if there had been an
aneurism by anastomosis." He therefore, in his second
operation, previously secured the temporal and internal
maxillary arteries and external jugular vein : and in his
third, he tied the external carotid. McClellan tied
none of these.

Enough, doubtless, has been said in proof of the
boldness, novelty, and success of McClellan's surgical
operations. Their number cannot be so easily ascer-
tained. An unprecedented reputation, increasing
through twenty-eight years, had made him known in
Europe and America ; and consequently a great number
of important cases were referred to him. His office
was the daily resort of from ten to thirty surgical pa-
tients, on many of whom he would there, in his off-
handed way, perform operations which, to the ordinary
surgeon, would be a matter of importance and prepara-
tion. In ophthalmic surgery, stricture, syphilis, hernia,
lithotomy and crushing, he had a special reputation.
To these may be added his numerous extirpations of
cancerous mammce, lymphatic glands, thyroid glands,
and enormous encysted and adipose tumours, together
with his cases of dislocation, fracture and amputation.
He was not only rapid in the execution of his operations,
but untiring in assuming new obligations, and all as the
ordinary events of a day. He has operated in three cases
of strangulated hernia within thirty hours. On an
occasion, prostrated by sickness, he travelled several
miles in a severe snow storm, and arrested a danger-

28

ous alarming haemorrhage from the axillary artery, in
consequence of a gun-shot wound, by promptly tying
the subclavian artery. So soon as he had completed
the operation, the stimulus of his surgical zeal subsided,
and he was seized with vomiting and great prostration ;
yet, notwithstanding his sickness, he, on his return
home in the storm, turned out of his way with renewed
energy, and performed an operation on the eye, after
which, the excitement of operating passing off, his vomit-
ing and depression returned.

His surgical zeal caused not only a disregard of
health, but also of appearances. On one occasion, he
darted into a retail dry good store in this city, opened
one of its drawers, took out something without asking
permission, which he put into his pocket, and darted
out, leaving all in amaze at his rapid, unexplained con-
duct. Its explanation was that, being engaged, or
about being so, in an operation, and needing a certain
form and kind of bandage, he promptly remembered
that more than a year back he had, after an operation,
put away in that drawer the bandage he needed.

On a third occasion, whilst consulting with a fel-
low practitioner, and in company with the patient at
her work-stand, he helped himself to her sewing-silk,
twice doubled, waxed and measured off portions of it,
talking at the same time more rapidly than he could be
easily understood. " What ! are you making ligatures,
McClellan V remarked his medical friend. " Yes," re-
plied he, " I'm going to operate, and the operation may
be bloody. Come along!" They went; and all the
way McClellan incessantly talked. On arrival, they
found students in waiting. The case was an enormous
carcinoma, deeply seated in the back of the thigh, and
reaching its length. McClellan rapidly and completely
denuded the tumour, and, whilst burrowing under it

29

and rooting it out, divided the arteries more rapidly
than his assistants secured them, and the parts became
deluged with arterial blood. He, with admirable pre-
sence and quickness, turned the patient over in his
blood, cut down below the sigmoid flexure of the fascia
lata, and secured the crural artery, the great trunk of
all the divided and bleeding vessels. Then, replacing
his patient, he completed the extirpation of the cancer-
ous mass. In the deep, extensive wound, among the
exposed muscles and the ligatures on arterial branches,
the great ischiatic nerve was seen dangling about like a
whip-cord.

From such data some estimate may be made of the
amount of his surgical labours. Has any other surgeon
in private practice, done an equal amount of surgery ?
It was not, however, on what McClellan did, bold as
it was, that we are willing to rest his chirurgical cha-
racter, but on his inherent capability of performing extra-
ordinary and supposed impossible operations in surgery.
Opposition and apparent impossibilities, the ordinary
sedatives on human efforts, were to McClellan the
needed stimuli to bring into action, for great deeds,
his hidden reserved powers. As proof that his surgi-
cal capabilities were rather inherent than imposed by
education, are the facts, that he operated boldly before
his graduation, — that he extracted the lens as before
mentioned, within a year after — extirpated the lower jaw
within four years after, and in the seventh year of his
becoming an M. D., as has been noticed, he performed
the supposed impossible operation of extirpating the
parotid gland. In view then of his chirurgical genius
and his master-pieces in surgery, is not McClellan to
be regarded, by the profession throughout the world,
as one of her surgeons-in-chief?
. McClellan sustained another character, and with equal

30

merit, — that of a medical instructor in all the depart-
ments of writer, private preceptor, public professor
and clinical teacher. He excelled in all of them.
That happy unison of eye and hand, more than once
adverted to, did not more certainly secure to him surgi-
cal dexterity, than did that more important unison of a
rapid mind, tongue and pen secure for him eloquence in
teaching.

As a writer, he has been the contributor of original
medico-chirurgical reports ; one of the conductors of the
American Medical Review and Journal ; the commen-
tator on Eberle's Theory and Practice of Physic ; and
soon will be known as the author of a system of Ameri-
can Surgery. Through the politeness of the publishers,
Messrs. Grigg & Elliot, I have been permitted to glance
over three hundred pages of proof. One hundred of it
unfolds new and important principles of shocks, reactions
and irritation. The rest of them is also a rich mass of
medico-chirurgical principles illustrated by his own ex-
tensive clinic. The entire work will make about five
hundred pages octavo. It is one of genius and of high
practical value. Its style that which can only be attained
by good sense, simplicity, experience, and extensive
knowledge.

These remarks may surprise some ! — perhaps many !
McClellan's off-hand manner did not, to the ordi-
nary observer, bespeak cultivation, but rather that he
was only one of the mere knife-men in surgery, and not
one of the gentlest. Such indeed is the impression with
many.

Permit me to introduce here an interview between
McClellan and a medical friend, which will present
this matter in a correct light :

"Having read me," says the latter, "the section on
burns of his new work; I remarked that he had con-

31

cisely embraced in his section all our knowledge on
that topic, — adding that I was agreeably surprised at
so great perspicuity and method. At this last remark
he started! Yes! replied he, in his peculiar emphatic
manner, 'you "have the opinion which others have of
me, — that I'm confused and thoughtless, and never
take time to reflect. I confess that it is reasonable
that you all should think so; for you judge me from
my out-door manners and conversation. But there!
pointing to his sofa, there ! I can be found at study.
I visit patients at the hotels and elsewhere, pick up
the news, glance over the papers and talk politics, for
amusement and relaxation, and back home to my study.
I'm now engaged in this work. I read the washy stuff
from the press, study other works, am posted up in
Egyptian Archaeology, and have lately read some of the
classics. I have not only kept up my knowledge on all
the branches of medicine and surgery and the collateral
sciences, but also in history, poetry, &c.' I know, con-
tinues he rapidly, ' that I'm as hard a student as there is
in the city, and always have been so. I toil and spend
a large portion of my time at my books ; and that is the
reason I'm always at home except when called away by
business. Yes, except for patients ; and in the evening,
I'm at home;' — and again pointing to the north end of
his study sofa, ' I'm there.' "

McClellan had an exoteric and an esoteric manner.
In public, he was inconsiderate and irregular ; alone, he
was the grave, profound Philosopher. The forthcom-
ing system of surgery will then not only not surprise
us, but we shall expect it to give to him the character
of a classical medical writer ; and that it will be re-
garded an American standard work.

As an oral instructor he was not less distinguished.
His principles were Hippocratic, Baconic, Hunterian. It

32

was the straight and narrow path of orthodoxy in Medi-
cine, and not the broad and devious road of French and
German sophistry, in which he walked. Hence it was that
pupils had confidence in him, and in after life now look
back and respect him, and with us now condole. He drew
them and keeps them by truth and right. " Recollect,"
says he, to the graduating class of Jefferson College,
"what I have so constantly urged respecting the rules of
induction. What else than classification of phenomena
is the whole science of nature? Be governed therefore
by the observation of symptoms, — not by the imaginary
causes of them. Follow the dictates of common sense.
Be satisfied with the opinion thus formed. Reject all
inquiry into the secret and undefinable causes of life and
disease. You cannot imagine the advantage you will
gain, by such a course, over those who are governed by
the long exploded precepts of the schoolmen — revived
and repolished, as it must be confessed they have been,
by the innovators of France. While they are balancing
doubts and difficulties, and vibrating from one conjec-
ture to another, you will be fortified by the calm and
unchangeable dictates of sound reason and philosophy."

Such precepts were incessantly given. His instruc-
tions were not restricted to the official condition of
chartered institutions. He communicated knowledge
any where and every where — at the bed-side, in the
office, at the corners of the streets, in the gig and by the
way side. He rapidly and abundantly acquired intellec-
tual nourishment for pupils; and with the instinctive
propensity and delight of a nursing mother he pressed
the hungry pupil to his heart and fed him from his truth-
ful scientific lips. Such was the multiform character of
McClellan as a Medical Instructor, making the second
item of our claim.

McClellan held a third public station; which in its

33

results, has proved to be by far the most important— the
founder of medical schools. A short statement will
show that he founded them in accordance to order, time
and place.

The origin of Medical Schools in this country is in
two events. Doctor William Shippen, recently returned
to the colonies from Europe, commenced, in 1762, the
first anatomical course of lectures; and, in his introduc-
tory, expressed the belief "in the expediency and prac-
ticability of teaching medicine in all its branches in Phi-
ladelphia." The other event was that Doctor Morgan
formed, whilst yet in Scotland, the project of engrafting a
medical department on the College of Philadelphia. Two
are of one accord, to make Philadelphia the American
seat of Medical Science. Morgan secured the opinion
and recommendation of several influential friends of the
institution in Great Britain. They accordingly, by let-
ters, advised the trustees in favour of establishing medi-
cal professorships. They, in approval of the plan,
appointed Doctor Morgan to the professorship of the'
Theory and Practice of Physic on the 2d of May, 1765,
and Doctor Shippen to that of Anatomy and Surgery
on the 23d of the following September. Thus germi-
nated our time-honored Medical Department of the
University of Pennsylvania,— the parent medical school
of America.

The trustees, to conciliate public sentiment, made,
through Professor Morgan, an exposition of the adopted
plan. His address contained the following prophetic
expressions. << Perhaps," remarks this patriarch of our
medical schools, " this medical institution, the first of its
kind in America, though small in its beginning, may re-
ceive a constant accession of strength and annually exert
new vigour." So it has been. Oak-like, after a slow
growth of 39 years, and then ten years of more rapid

3

34

evolution, it attained in 1817 its acme. This acme, for
now thirty years, as a bloom which can have no decline
— no involution — no senile atrophy, it has fully retained
and will retain.

Second, "this medical institution may collect a number
of young men of more than ordinary abilities and so
improve their knowledge as to spread its reputation to
distant parts." This expectation also has been realized.
It numbers more than 4000 graduates. Many of them
have become chemists, druggists and agriculturists.
Among the rest are the great body of skilful and humane
physicians, and the corps of army and navy surgeons,
together with discoverers, journalists, authors and
eloquent teachers.

Third, "this institution, by duly qualified alumni,
may give birth to other useful institutions of a similar
nature." This also has come to pass, not only in Phila-
delphia, but elsewhere. Most of the medical schools
throughout our extended country have been formed by
the alumni of the University of Pennsylvania.

I call attention to the object of our venerable alma
mater : viz., obedience to the great command, " Go heal
the sick ;" — the sicknesses of the people of a new country
— their fevers, inflammations, chronic and nervous com-
plaints, and accidents, — to the liberal and wise policy
adopted to fulfil the command; viz., the establishment
of a maternal institution, which, through the instrumen-
tality of her able alumni, shall form other medical
schools. One of these alumni was the late Doctor
George McClellan. An effort to form a second medical
school in Philadelphia, was made during the winter of
1818-19. The items in the argument presented on the
occasion, were the inordinate increase of population by
birth and immigration, the uncomfortable increase of the
class from that of three hundred and eighty-eight to

35

four hundred and fifty-five pupils, and the genius of the
republic favouring competition rather than monopoly.
The spirit of the enterprise and the methods being
objectionable, the unwise effort proved abortive. With
this matter MeClellan was not engaged.

Nevertheless, a second school was subsequently
formed, and that by MeClellan. He formed it in ac-
cordance with the expectations of Shippen and Morgan,
the founders of the parent school. Pupils clustered
about this able alumnus of this school, and filled his
office ; for when he eyed a pupil, he locked his arm,
grasped his hand, and instructed him. McClellan's
zeal may be inferred from the following extract of one
of his letters to a student of medicine, viz., " It will
give me great pleasure to meet you among my small
company of fine young fellows in the office where at
least you can be happy if you do not improve. As to
the terms, I'm on such terms with your excellent
brother, that I shall be happy to have an opportunity of
showing my good feelings towards him ; and if you do
not feel satisfied with that, why, we will wait until I get
poor and you get rich before you do or say any thing
further on the subject."

In regard to generosity in the character of MeClellan,
I will add in digression the following short anecdote.

On one occasion, he visited one on whose eye he
had recently operated. The case demanded subse-
quent rest in bed and darkness. He found her at the
wash tub. To his rebuke, she replied, that her pov-
erty forced her to disobey the doctor. He instantly
walked her back to her bed and dark room, and putting
the good prescription of a twenty dollar note in her
hand, said : — "Now you don't have to disobey."

A wealthy army officer, long afflicted with a difficult
surgical complaint, on being completely cured and re-

36

stored to health by him, in the most gentlemanly manner
presented him, with his expressions of gratitude, a most
generous fee. " No ! replied McClellan, I can't be fee'd
for curing wounds received in the defence of my coun-
try." A military gentleman had an only son congenitally
crippled. A mutual friend urged the sending for
McClellan. He successfully operated, and here also
he refused pecuniary compensation. His admiration of
the virtues and talents of the father induced McClellan
to decline compensation for service to the son.

In addition to zeal and generosity, he possessed that
rare and enviable gift of recollecting names and faces.
Says one of his former pupils, in exemplification: "I first
saw Doctor McClellan when he passed through our
town to Harrisburg, to favour the law chartering Jeffer-
son College. He called at my brother's office, in which
I was a student, at a time when several medical students
from other offices were present. He was introduced to
us all, and all were named. He was there but a few min-
utes, picked up a newspaper, glanced over it, seemed to
devour its contents in an instant, talked about it rapidly
all the time he was reading it, said a few words about
the College, and was off, leaving an impression in his
favour which I'm sure has never been effaced. What
is remarkable, one year after, three of us went to Phi-
ladelphia to attend the lectures, and the moment we
entered Doctor McClellan's office, he recognized and
named each one of us, although he had seen us only
once before, a year back, and only a very short time."

A teacher so qualified will attract pupils. To his
office he added an anatomico-surgical room. And here-
he lectured night after night with all the ease and ani-
mation of a clinical teacher. Who cannot perceive
here the legitimate germ of a medical school ? Who and
what could arrest its evolution, and who could give the

37

measure of its full development? New York and Balti-
more, whose schools for a few years were prospering, did
not then know how the reversion to Philadelphia was to
be effected. In the course and by the Orderer of events,
the McClellan class became the Medical Department of
Jefferson College ; and he, for fifteen years, the lecturer
extraordinary, — at times on surgery, and at times on
both anatomy and surgery. Since then it has com-
manded and received for its professorships the best
talents of the country, and has become a great school.

Was the location of it in Philadelphia an impropriety ?
Shippen, in view of the spirit of his first introductory,
could not consistently have thought so. The state else-
where can furnish no requisitions and appliances for
medical instruction. The unprecedented growth of the
scion in the same soil, has not rendered less fruitful the
deeply rooted mother. To change the metaphor, the
two schools, like two magnets, collected more than
double the amount of pupils, — fulfilling thereby, with
increase of zeal, usefulness and reputation, the object of
our alma mater, and the liberal expectations of the
American medical patriarch.

Another school was to be formed by McClellan. In
1838 his labors as a teacher were restricted again to
those of a private class. Rich in medical science and
general literature, and more than ever Hippocratic and
Hunterian in his views, he enforced, with more zeal
than ever, his favorite common-sense inductive system.
His class consequently prospered, and in 1839, became,
with a full faculty on the six cardinal branches, The
Medical Department of Pennsylvania College, located
at Philadelphia.

I need not notice the evidence that this third school is
also both well timed and well placed. During four years
it enjoyed unprecedented prosperity — its class averaged

38

100 matriculates. Suddenly in 1844, it was in the con-
dition of a ship just out of a storm. And now, it is
like the same remanned, having safely made four addi-
tional voyages, and now spreading sail for the fifth.
May we have fine weather and happy faces all the
voyage.

Such was the public life of the late Doctor George
McClellan. He now appears before us in the triple
character, pre-eminently, of a surgeon, a teacher, and
the founder of medical schools.

■•Man's daily acts seem like trifles, — worthless as de-
tached and separated grains of sand ; but these aggre-
gated, as the shore of the ocean, and those enchained
and summed up, as life's work, excite our admiration, —
indeed they both seem to be almost sublime. Permit
me to make an application of this truism by saying that
McClellan, except when he performed some bold act of
extra surgery, seemed to us who were familiar with him
in the ordinary, unfinished, imperfect doings of detached
and separated days, as merely one of us ; but now, that
life's duty is done, and gazing at him in the complete-
ness of his character, we instinctively honor him with
the honor due unto him. This is the tribute we pay to
his memory.

In review, we discern a three stranded thread, genius,
utility and rapidity in thought, word and action, like the
triple elements of light, passing through all the events
of his life, to be the unity of his character.

With remarkable quickness he learned from books
and conversation. That, which without and beyond pre-
cedence, his sleepless genius strongly and practically
conceived, he promptly executed. He thought, execu-
ted and communicated, in a day, more than others did
in a week, — his weeks were as the months of ordinary
men ; and his years, each of them, as their lives. His

39

crowded hours making him precociously experienced,
he consequently distanced his contemporaries, and, as a
youth, was found among his seniors and the master-
spirits of his profession. McClellan, surely, " was not
one of those who are appointed to lock their hands in
those of their preceptors and predecessors, and tread
the same bare path with neither change of motion nor
ground, where each one leads as he is led." His ap-
pointment seems rather to have been, to seek for Truth
in Truth's own Book, which by God Himself was writ;
wisely thinking it was fit, not to read comments only on
it, but, "on the original to look."

McClellan had his peculiarities. His sans ceremonie
and en avant spirit seemed like obtrusiveness, insub-
ordination and disrespect — and the infliction of rebuke
has been doubtless sufficiently given ! — Some of his
best friends indeed would say that he was impolitic,
and unwise, and, at times, even inconsiderate and
imprudent. His bold and novel acts in surgery, to
him not extraordinary matters, he would most freely
communicate to all and every one in season and out of
season, and in such a peculiar rapid incoherent manner,
that often it displeased the lover of established usage and
propriety. He sometimes thereby indeed also disturbed
the ordinary course ; and rufiled occasionally even those
who seemed, at a very early period, to prophetically
perceive that McClellan was not commissioned for an
ordinary life. But we all did it ignorantly. Now,
looking at the full cartoon of his character, we discern
that his peculiarities were the guilelessness, unceremoni-
ousness and unsuspiciousness of a child of genius perpe-
tually burning with a chirurgical zeal. The peculiari-
ties of one who ofttimes felt his spirit stirred against
opprobrious disease stalking with defiance in the terri-
fied presence of the medical profession, and who, with-

40

out professional support, dared to meet and subdue it.
That daring he has imparted to others. Like Bowditch,
he infused his spirit into his pupils. There are now
hundreds of them scattered over the country who mani-
fest it in their bold and efficient surgery, and who will
welcome the forthcoming publication of those principles
which they once heard from his eloquent lips, and on
which their success in practice has so much depended.

His Faults ! they were those of humanity and genius,
and those educed by external relations ! There is a
repentance which cometh down from above! — " If man,
said McClellan, had nothing better to depend on, before
his Judge, than his own righteousness, it would be a
poor dependence !" Is this the language of the penitent
— then his sins are washed away — away for ever ! !
He is before us without his faults, — the gifted man of
our profession, — his ten talents all improved.

We honor him for his marvellous works ! — " In
the sight of great men" he " shall be in admiration" !
His pupils, his schools, his parents, our city and county,
our state and nation, and the whole medical profession
" will honor" him " for the uses they have had of him,"
subordinately, however, for "of the Most High cometh
healing." He createth the physician; giveth him skill,
and medicine out of the earth. As His servant we honor
him. " The sick had need of him, and in his hands
there was good success."

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