Page:Memoir of George McClellan MD.djvu/7

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Memoir.


In obedience to our Faculty, I appear before you, Gentlemen, to pay a tribute to the memory of the Founder of the Medical Department of Pennsylvania College;—the late, much lamented Doctor George McClellan. He died on Sunday morning between twelve and one o'clock, on the 9th of last May, at his late residence, No. 248, Walnut street, in the fifty-first year of his age.

On the day previous to his death, he visited his patients as usual, and held a consultation in an important surgical case with Doctor Horner. In the afternoon of the same day, he was attacked with violent pain in the gastric region and with vomiting. At eight o'clock, P. M. his lower extremities became cold and insensible. A little after midnight he ceased to breathe.

During the last year or more of his life, his countenance and frequent indisposition manifested that he was sustaining himself against chronic disease by his extraordinary strength and activity of mind and spirit. Autopsy discovered this disease to be ulceration of the mucous coat of the bowels, and that the immediate cause of his sudden death was an ulcerated opening a few inches below the sygmoid flexure of the colon.

At the earliest period after the sad intelligence reached us, we met, and among the expressions of con-