George Woolsey

George Woolsey died July 1, 1950, at the age of 89. For fifty-nine years he had been a Centurion. Son of Theodore Dwight Woolsey, president of Yale, it was natural that he should prepare for Yale at the Hopkins Grammar School—founded forty years before Yale, and long a preparatory school for New Haven boys. While at school, and later at college, he spent much of his spare time collecting and preparing ornithological specimens, now preserved at the Peabody Museum of Natural History. Perhaps the manual training thus acquired led him to choose surgery as his profession. In any case, with this in mind he took a post-graduate year in the Scientific School before entering the College of Physicians and Surgeons.

In 1885 he received his medical degree. His work at P. & S. won for him the Harson prize, which, after a year and a half on the house staff of Roosevelt Hospital, he used to help finance a trip of study abroad. His companion for part of this time was the Centurion, Dr. Samuel W. Lambert. They first went to Hamburg, and later took courses in Berlin, Vienna and Paris.

In 1892 he married Jean Ellenwood; and they started their married life at 117 East 36 Street, where they lived till 1949, when they moved to New Haven. Certainly Woolsey was no rolling stone, for he occupied the same town house, the same country house, and the same Adirondack Camp for fifty-five years or more. He remained active in his profession till the age of 75. During his long career of teaching and practice he published many articles for the medical journals and wrote his book, “Applied Surgical Anatomy.” A former house surgeon working as his assistant at the Presbyterian Hospital recalls Dr. Woolsey’s careful, unhurried operating. He believed in such investigation as the incision permitted.

As interne at Roosevelt Hospital in May, 1866, he assisted Dr. R. J. Hall in performing the first operation in the United States for the removal of the appendix. He was the first to use the now accepted technique for the hernia operation, and also one of the first to operate successfully for cancer. If he had a specialty, it was operating on the digestive tract.

The Century was a treasured part of his life. He was there continually, even after his eye-sight was very restricted. He did not hesitate to walk to the Club, day or night, and laughed at any suggestion that there was risk involved. An account of Woolsey’s life would be incomplete if no mention were made of his church. He was always a regular attendant at the “Brick Church,” even after the church moved uptown. For twenty-five years he served as a member of the Board of the American Bible Society.

His contemporaries at the Century will remember his ever ready humor and his full enjoyment of what life had to offer. He was modest almost to a fault. His tastes were simple and unexacting. Living well into an age of skepticism, he maintained a serenity and balance that heartened those who knew him, and gave them renewed faith in the ultimate triumph of common-sense and decency.

George W. Martin
1951/1952 Century Association Yearbook