Page:Memoir of George McClellan MD.djvu/20

 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 association, 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 resection of the entire prehensile member.

His case, exhibited in preparation No. 321 of the pathological cabinet of our museum, is an enormous fungus hæmatodes 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 involved the lower jaw bone to the condyles, and being