William Darrach

“ Hence it is that McClellan, like the elm tree, possessed those two opposite and rarely combined golden qualities of firmness and flexibility, so essential to greatness of character.
A large, symmetrical head, thick black hair, strong brow, stout and projecting chin, and high cheek bone, were blended with a deeply set, quickly glancing, mild blue eye; with an impulsive motion of his muscles, induced by a mind enthusiastically occupied with bold, humane acts; and with a compressed yet smiling mouth —a manly smile at purpose formed or accomplished, which did not relax even in death. ”

“ I have long known McClellan;—longer, indeed, than any member of the profession outside of his family, except our mutual friend Doctor Beesley. We have ever loved him; and have always appreciated and admired his genius, his acquirements, and his numerous, extraordinary, bold and successful operations in surgery.
My task is limited to a tribute to the memory of McClellan. More than this, I leave to those who are gifted with the rare talent of constructing human character from moral actions ”

“ There are now hundreds of them scattered over the country who manifest it in their bold and efficient surgery, and who will welcome the forthcoming publication of those principles which they once heard from his eloquent lips, and on which their success in practice has so much depended.
His Faults! they were those of humanity and genius, and those educed by external relations! There is a repentance which cometh down from above!—“If man, said McClellan, had nothing better to depend on, before his Judge, than his own righteousness, it would be a poor dependence!” ”

“ He is before us without his faults,—the gifted man of our profession,—his ten talents all improved.
We honor him for his marvellous works!—“In the sight of great men” he “shall be in admiration”! His pupils, his schools, his parents, our city and county, our state and nation, and the whole medical profession “will honor” him “for the uses they have had of him,” subordinately, however, for “of the Most High cometh healing.” He createth the physician; giveth him skill, and medicine out of the earth. As His servant we honor him. ”

“ George McClellan, the son of the late Doctor McClellan, is now an officer of the Sappers and Miners, and, with his company, has been in all the actions in the valley of Mexico that preceded the armistice, and have since terminated in the capture of that city, demonstrates that the valiant spirit of the highland Scotch still continues to exist.
A humane rather than a martial spirit becomes the physician, yet oftentimes presence, boldness, and intrepidity are his essential requisitions. McClellan had much of these opposite qualities. Human character, it is true, results from education ”

“ We demand for the founder of our school, the late Doctor George McClellan, a place, honourable, perpetual among those who, by their worthy deeds, have become historical medical characters; and will attempt to show his claim to this high place by what he has been as a surgeon, a medical instructor, and founder of medical schools. ”

“ Permit me, gentlemen, to occupy a few moments of your time in an exposition of this grand operation, and of McClellan's pre-eminent relation to it. The complete extirpation of a diseased parotid gland was considered an impossibility. The under portion of this gland is deeply seated and compacted in among important muscles and bones appertaining to the brain, the organs of hearing, mastication, deglutition and speech. Through its substance pass the external carotid artery and the great nerve of expression and respiration. ”

“ One of these alumni was the late Doctor George McClellan. An effort to form a second medical school in Philadelphia, was made during the winter of 1818–19. The items in the argument presented on the occasion, were the inordinate increase of population by birth and immigration, the uncomfortable increase of the class from that of three hundred and eighty-eight to four hundred and fifty-five pupils, and the genius of the republic favouring competition rather than monopoly. The spirit of the enterprise and the methods being objectionable, the unwise effort proved abortive. ”

“ Convinced that this practice, induced by a physiological error, was useless and injurious; and that hæmorrhage was more dependent on the inosculation than the arborescence of vessels, or at least equally so, he determined to save the constitution of his patients from so grave and useless a hazard. “To tie up,” says he, “the carotid artery, before the performance of an operation, can only prove that the life of the patient is able to resist a double hazard, while his surgeon is gaining all the advantages which can be realized from such a precaution.” ”

“ McClellan rapidly and completely denuded the tumour, and, whilst burrowing under it and rooting it out, divided the arteries more rapidly than his assistants secured them, and the parts became deluged with arterial blood. He, with admirable presence and quickness, turned the patient over in his blood, cut down below the sigmoid flexure of the fascia lata, and secured the crural artery, the great trunk of all the divided and bleeding vessels. Then, replacing his patient, he completed the extirpation of the cancerous mass. ”

“ The unprecedented growth of the scion in the same soil, has not rendered less fruitful the deeply rooted mother. To change the metaphor, the two schools, like two magnets, collected more than double the amount of pupils,—fulfilling thereby, with increase of zeal, usefulness and reputation, the object of our alma mater, and the liberal expectations of the American medical patriarch. ”

“ To these discouraging circumstances are to be added the inherent difficulties of the operation, viz., the serious implication of the carotid artery, that of the seventh pair of nerves, the constricting bony margin made anteriorly by the ramus of the lower jaw and posteriorly by the mastoid process and external meatus of the ear; the diseased mass jammed by its processes into a deep expanding cavity in such a manner as to be in contact with the walls of the pharynx, the styloid process and its muscles, the internal carotid artery and jugular vein, and the hypoglossal nerve. ”

“ In 1826, a medical gentleman from Europe became a patient of Doctor McClellan. He was afflicted with a diseased parotid, excruciating pain, and a chronic ophthalmia. As he had been already under the care of a distinguished European surgeon, there was no doubt of the diagnosis. The point for decision was the practicability of extirpation. The tumour had on its surface the scar left from a failure to remove it from supposed insurmountable difficulties. The operation, owing to Bedard's recent failure, was in disrepute ”

“ There is an eternal memory of human deeds, which, when done in obedience to the Master's command, “Go heal the sick,” will graciously obtain the praise of “Well done, good and faithful servant,” and the invitation, surpassing all invitations, “enter thou into the joy of thy Lord.”
George McClellan was born at Woodstock, Windham County, State of Connecticut, on the 22d day of December, 1796. ”

“ In 1821, he married into one of the most influential families of Philadelphia, and became established as a practitioner, before whom was an open path of usefulness and honor. As such we find him keeping house, and enjoying domestic happiness at the corner of Walnut and Swanwick streets, on the latter of which he had arranged an office and a lecture-room. His now happy life, so far from abating, stimulated his professional zeal. He became most actively engaged in general practice and in delivering courses of lectures on Anatomy and Surgery. ”

“ There were instances then, however, of human suffering, and which doubtless have since increased in number, which demanded a bolder surgery than appears in Dorsey's Elements, and the operations and lectures of Physick. Cases such as those of Mary Rice, Dr. Graham, Brook, Wagonseller and Rhinehart, were not reached by American, some of them not by European surgery. The surgery of Physick's day was lithotomy with the gorget; and subordinately to it, as major operations, were performed the extraction of the opake lens; the tying of the carotid and internal iliac arteries ”

“ You cannot imagine the advantage you will gain, by such a course, over those who are governed by the long exploded precepts of the schoolmen—revived and repolished, as it must be confessed they have been, by the innovators of France. ”

“ To his office he added an anatomico-surgical room. And here he lectured night after night with all the ease and animation of a clinical teacher. Who cannot perceive here the legitimate germ of a medical school? Who and what could arrest its evolution, and who could give the measure of its full development? New York and Baltimore, whose schools for a few years were prospering, did not then know how the reversion to Philadelphia was to be effected. In the course and by the Orderer of events, the McClellan class became the Medical Department of Jefferson College ”

“ A third point of improvement in surgery by McClellan, is that of not shocking the system in the extirpation of large or deep-seated tumours, by the serious preliminary operation of tying a main artery, as for example the carotid, when its branches are involved in the disease. ”

“ What is remarkable, one year after, three of us went to Philadelphia to attend the lectures, and the moment we entered Doctor McClellan's office, he recognized and named each one of us, although he had seen us only once before, a year back, and only a very short time.”
A teacher so qualified will attract pupils. ”

“ Third, “this institution, by duly qualified alumni, may give birth to other useful institutions of a similar nature.” This also has come to pass, not only in Philadelphia, but elsewhere. Most of the medical schools throughout our extended country have been formed by the alumni of the University of Pennsylvania. ”

“ He formed it in accordance with the expectations of Shippen and Morgan, the founders of the parent school. Pupils clustered about this able alumnus of this school, and filled his office; for when he eyed a pupil, he locked his arm, grasped his hand, and instructed him. McClellan's zeal may be inferred from the following extract of one of his letters to a student of medicine, viz., “It will give me great pleasure to meet you among my small company of fine young fellows in the office where at least you can be happy if you do not improve. ”

“ 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. [1] 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. ”

“ This deplorable condition was aggravated by constant pain, and doomed the sufferer in the morning of life, with precocious intellect, to premature death by pain and starvation. The drawing before you exhibits the case in July, 1823, when McClellan was called to examine and decide on it. He operated. The operation was as rapid as bold, occupying only four minutes and a half. This drawing exhibits the extirpated tumour and jaw; and this preparation is the removed cancerous mass. ”