新澳资料

The Lives They Led

Brilliant Surgeon, Tragic Accident

Photo Courtesy of Oregon Health & Science University, Historical Collections & Archives.

The quicksilver life of Dr. Arthur McLean 鈥�21,
Portland鈥檚 first neurosurgeon.

By Karen Lea Anderson Peterson

Dr. Arthur McLean ’21 died on December 7, 1938, when his car veered off a steep turn on Northwest Cornell Road in Portland’s West Hills, crashed through a guardrail, and came to rest on the edge of a cliff, its wheels hanging precariously over the canyon below. Rescuers found his body 10 feet from the car, a handkerchief tied around a deep wound on his head. The engine was still running.

Just 44 years old, McLean was a controversial figure in medical circles. Portland’s first trained neurosurgeon, he had published more than two dozen medical articles on everything from paraphysical cysts to intractable pain. Demanding perfection of himself and others, he frequently clashed with fellow physicians and resigned from the faculty at the University of Oregon Medical School not once but twice.

Some said that he had committed suicide; others insisted that he would never have taken his life. “McLean simply wasn’t the kind to kill himself,” one Portland physician told the Oregonian. “He was the sort who would want to stick around, just to prove that all he had said was right.”

Whatever the cause, there is no doubt that the accident cut short the life of one of Oregon’s most brilliant surgeons.

Arthur John McLean entered 新澳资料 in fall 1917 as a graduate of Franklin High School in Seattle. After his first semester, he was called up to serve in World War I with the 41st Division in France. He returned to the college in spring 1919 and quickly developed a reputation as a man in a hurry. “Edison has the sleeping sickness compared to Art,” noted editors of the 1921 Griffin. He was notably the “busiest man on campus,” said classmates; “unstintingly” supporting a wide range of campus causes and organizations. He was the dominant tenor in the chorus, a feature writer for the Quest, a member of the literary club, the Quills, and a wrestler. He also distinguished himself on stage as “one of the best actors 新澳资料 has ever known,” appearing as the lead in 新澳资料 Drama Club productions such as J.M. Barrie’s Pantaloon and Chekhov’s A Marriage Proposal. 

Art served as a faculty and administrative student assistant, and was president and “papa” of House G, where he endeavored to teach fellow housemates “the beauty of knowledge.” 

During his senior year, Art carried six subjects and wrote his thesis on “The Early History of the Primordial Germ Cells of the Chick” to earn his BA in biology.

After graduation, he went to Johns Hopkins and earned an MD in 1925. He then interned at Peter Bent Brigham Hospital (Brigham and Women’s Hospital), where he studied with Harvey Cushing, the father of modern neurosurgery. He also studied with the celebrated neurosurgeon Otfried Foerster in Breslau, Germany.

Art returned to Portland in 1931 as clinical instructor in surgery and neuropsychiatry at the University of Oregon Medical School (OHSU), later becoming an assistant professor of pathology and clinical associate in surgery and neuropsychiatry. He also maintained a private practice in Portland, opening an office in the Medical Arts Building.

From the McLean Collection at the OHSU archives, we know that he gave the impression of being brash, disrespectful, and hot-headed. But the record also portrays a man of reason, who could not stand dishonesty and hated stupidity. His fellow faculty members pronounced him a “brilliant” physician, his teaching work “beautifully” organized, and that he was a “magnetic” person in the eyes of the medical students.

Dr. Cushing was always supportive of his work: in 1936 Cushing pronounced his paper on cerebral neuroepithelioma “. . . a perfectly bang-up piece of work. We are delighted with it . . . it is certainly the best worked-up case in the literature.” Cushing encouraged him not to apologize for his youth. Foer