George McClellan

Life and work McClellan was born on December 22, 1796, in Woodstock, Connecticut, to Eunice (Eldredge) and James McClellan. His family was of Scottish and English ancestry.

George McClellan died early in the morning on May 9, 1847, from exsanguination due to an ulcerated lesion below the sigmoid flexure of the colon. He was interred at Laurel Hill Cemetery, Philadelphia.

Career McClellan entered into the sophomore class at Yale at the age of sixteen and excelled in mathematics and published natural sciences articles in the American Journal of Science. In 1815, at age 18, he obtained his baccalaureate degree. He then took up the study of medicine, first with Thomas Hubbard of Pomfret, Connecticut, later Professor of Surgery of the Medical College of New Haven, with whom he remained one year. In 1817, he went to Philadelphia to attend medical lectures at the University of Pennsylvania, and to become the private pupil of John Syng Dorsey, Professor of Materia Medica, receiving his Doctor of Medicine degree in 1819. With this in mind, the group made a request to the Legislature of Pennsylvania in 1824, and in 1825, received a charter for what was to become Jefferson Medical College. Nonetheless, his extended medical education system (referring to more years spent in school than the standard 2 to 3 at the time) became widely accepted and spread among schools.