Page:Memoir of George McClellan MD.djvu/29

 The appalling hæmorrhage 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 hæmorrhagic 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 ascertained. 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 patients, on many of whom he would there, in his offhanded way, perform operations which, to the ordinary surgeon, would be a matter of importance and preparation. In ophthalmic surgery, stricture, syphilis, hernia, lithotomy and crushing, he had a special reputation. To these may be added his numerous extirpations of cancerous mammæ, 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