Page:American Medical Biographies - Kelly, Burrage.djvu/752

NAME MC CLELLAN 730 MC CLELLAN valuable quality in the pre-anesthesia days, but one leading some critical persons to infer that the operator was unfeeling. He had a private dissecting room and lectured there and at- tracted extra-mural students after the fashion of the day. These were also the days when the general surgeon performed all eye opera- tions and it was not without many heart- burnings that he at a later date reluctantly and slowly yielded up this coveted ground to the innovating eye specialists. McClellan was one of the pioneers in the extirpation of the parotid gland, which he did eleven times with one death. When he took hold of this operation it was labelled by a no less surgeon than John Bell as impossible and absurd. In 1838 he extirpated the scapula and the clavicle for malignant disease, without anesthe- tic and without artery forceps. He also re- sected the ribs, then a novel operation. He died while attempting to write a text book on the principles and practice of surgery, the first sheets were brought to him in bed when he was too ill to notice them. This book, edited and published posthumously by his son, was a failure financially and professionalU-. Gross says, "the best thing in it is its cases portrayed by the hand of a master." In 1820 he married Elizabeth, daughter of John H. Brinton. They had five children. He cultivated the practice of medicine as well as surgery, as did D. Hayes Agnew (q. v.) fifty years later. The difficulty even a vigor- ous masterful mind has in anticipating the next steps in the path of progress is illustrated by his valedictory advice given at the Jefferson College Commencement in 1836: "We can do very little in the way of theory and nothing in the way of hypothesis . . . reject all inquiry into the secret and undefinable causes of disease." S. D. Gross himself was drawn to Philadelphia by McCIellan's reputation and became his private pupil. He died suddenly, May 8, 1847, from "an ulcerative perforation of the small intestine." McClellan had a passion for fine horses and a fondness for races. It was as much as one's life was worth to sit with him in his car- riage; he was a perfect Jehu, and yet he seldom met with an accident. Gross says "McClellan died poor. He bought town lots, built houses and lost money." Howard A. Kelly. Lives of Eminent Pliiladelphians now deceased. Henry Simpson, 1859. Portrait. Dictn'y of Amer. Biog. F. S. Drake, 1872. BioK. Notice of George McClellan. S. G. Morton, Trans. Phila. Coll. of Phys., 1846-49. 452-458. Amer. Med. Biog. S. D. Gross, 1861. Autobiography of Samuel D. Gross, M.D. 2 vols., 1887. McClellan, George (1849-1913) This Philadelphia anatomist came from dis- tinguished ancestors, many of whom fought for the Stuart cause in Scotland. The grand- father of his grandfather came to America and settled in Massachusetts. His great-grand- father held the King's Commission in the French and Indian War and was a brigadier general under Washington in the War of the Revolution. The grandfather of the subject of this sketch, George McClellan (q. v.), graduated from the Medical Department of the University of Pennsylvania in 1819, married Elizabeth Brinton, a Philadelphia belle, and founded the Jefferson Medical College. He was a celebrated surgeon of great originality, intrepidity, dexterity, energj', independence and force of character. George's father, John H. B. McClellan, was professor of anatomy in the Pennsylvania Medical College, surgeon to St. Joseph's Hospital and to Wills Eye Hospital. The brother of John H. B. Mc- Clellan and the uncle of George was General George B. McClellan, the illustrious soldier vvho commanded the Army of the Potomac during a part of the civil war. ' George McClellan was born in Philadelphia, October 29, 1849, of the union of John H. B. McClellan and Maria Eldridge. He was the eldest son and was named for his distinguished grandfather. After leaving school he passed three years in the Department of Arts of the University of Pennsylvania. In 1868 he be- gan the study of medicine in the Jefferson Medical College, where he listened to the elder Gross, Joseph Pancoast, James Aitken Meigs, John B. Biddle (q. v. to all) and other famous teachers, becoming intensely interested in sur- gery and anatomy. He graduated in 1870 and at once began practice. In 1872 he went to Europe and studied under that master anato- mist. Professor Hyrtl, of Vienna, being capti- vated by the teaching of the great Hungarian and determined to take up anatomical teach- ing as a career. In the way he thought of an- atomy, in the way he studied it, in the way he taught it, he was essentially a follower of Hyrtl. In 1873 McClellan returned to Philadelphia, again took up practice and taught private students anatomy and surgery. In that year he married Miss Harriett Hare, the granddaughter of a former celebrated pro- fessor of chemistry in the University of Penn- sylvania. McClellan became surgeon to the Philadelphia Hospital and to the Howard Hos- pital. In 1881 he founded the Pennsylvania School of Anatomy and Surgery, a very successful