Historical Profiles

Authors:
Jordan P. Bloom, BS
Charles J. Yeo, MD
Pinckney J. Maxwell IV, MD

Source:
The American Surgeon
(full text PDF)
Volume 77, Number 6, June 2011 , pp. 801-802(2)

• Born December 22, 1796
  
• 1816: Received AB from Yale
  
• 1819: Received MD from University of Pennsylvania
  
• 1820: Married Elizabeth Steinmetz Brinton, daughter
  of Civil war surgeon John Hill Brinton, MD (JMC 1852)
  of Philadelphia. They Had three sons and two daughters.

• 1820: Opened a dissecting room and began lecturing privately to medical students to augment the education that students received at the University of Pennsylvania
  
• Maintained large clinical practice as a prominent surgical ophthalmologist
  
• 1821: Established nation’s first free eye clinic: the “Institution for the Diseases of the Eye & Ear”

• At the beginning of the 19th century, only four Colleges in the United States possessed medical schools –Columbia, the University of Pennsylvania, Harvard, and Dartmouth.
  
  
• For several years, Penn alumni and supporters successfully blocked all efforts to form an additional school.
  
  
• In 1824, Dr. George McClellan promoted an audacious idea never tried before
  
  • Teaching medical students by having them observe experienced doctors treating patients.
    
  • McClellan’s revolutionary idea, and his willingness to act on it, created Jefferson Medical College, reshaping the way medicine would be taught throughout the world.

• 1824 - 1838: Chair of surgery at Jefferson
  
• 1838: Board of Trustees reorganized the college and McClellan
  was dropped from the faculty
  
• 1839: McClellan responded by establishing
  Philadelphia’s third medical school: the Medical Department of Pennsylvania College

• May 9, 1847: McClellan died suddenly from an ulcerative perforation
  of the small intestine
  
• McClellan is buried at Laurel Hill Cemetery in Philadelphia