Page:Biographical Notice Of The Late George McClellan.djvu/6

 His collegiate education completed, we next find this young man, in the year 1817, pursuing his medical studies in this city under the direction of the late Dr. Dorsey. Here, again, his restless activity and sleepless vigilance in the pursuit of knowledge, were remarked and admired by all; exciting the surprise of his fellow students, and drawing from older heads, the presage of future distinction. He took his medical degree in 1819, and at once entered on the arduous duties of his adopted vocation.

We do not propose to follow the phases of this gifted mind through its professional cycle of thirty years. To the eye of the casual observer, the path of the physician presents, from day to day and from month to month, the same unvaried uniformity,—a perpetual recurrence of similar scenes and circumstances, of which the busy world feels nothing and knows nothing. But how different is it with him, who, in the struggle for distinction, is alternately cheered by hope and dashed by disappointment— warring with caprice, mingling with disease and contending with death! These things however, are buried with the dead. They pass into oblivion; or at most, nothing remains of them except a few scattered memorials, which rise like wrecks upon the sea to attract the attention of the beholder.

It is to some of these more prominent events in the life of Dr. McClellan, that I propose now to advert. In so doing, I feel conscious of acting in accordance with his views when living; and "the wishes of the dead, when they can be discovered," observes the younger Pliny, "should be law to an honest mind."

After having given a private course of anatomical lectures, Dr. McClellan conceived the bold idea of founding a new medical school. With him, thought and action were simultaneous; a memorial was addressed by himself and others to the Legislature of Pennsylvania, and a charter was obtained in the winter of 1825, for the Jefferson Medical College.

I venture to assert, from a personal knowledge of the time and circumstances, that no professional innovation was ever more