Page:Memoir of George McClellan MD.djvu/30

 alarming hæmorrhage 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 vomiting 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 conduct. 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 fellow 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?” remarked his medical friend. “Yes,” replied 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