# American Medical Biographies/Harlan, George Cuvier

​Harlan, George Cuvier (1835–1909).
George C. Harlan, ophthalmologist, was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, January 28, 1835, and died September 25, 1909, following a fall from a horse.
He was a son of the physician and scientist, Dr. Richard Harlan (q. v.), and received the degree of B. A. from Delaware College in 1855, obtaining the master's degree three years later. He graduated in medicine from the University of Pennsylvania in 1858, his inaugural thesis being upon the subject of "The Iris."
On April 6, 1857, apparently several months before he graduated in medicine, he was appointed resident physician at Wills Hospital, in which institution he held the position of surgeon from March 4, 1861 to 1864, returning to active work in the same capacity in 1868, and remaining uninterruptedly in office for twenty-three years, resigning on May 8, 1901. He was later made consulting surgeon and held this position until his death.
He also held residencies in the Pennsylvania and St. Joseph's Hospitals; the latter during 1858–1859. Later he became attending surgeon to St. Mary's and the Children's Hospitals, all in Philadelphia.
At the beginning of the Civil War in 1861 he was appointed acting assistant surgeon in the U. S. Navy, being assigned to the gunboat Union. He resigned August 15th of the same year and in the following September was made major and surgeon in the Eleventh Pennsylvania Cavalry.
During the war he was captured and sent to Libby prison in Richmond, Virginia, and honorably mustered out of the service, September 28, 1864.
In 1875 he became ophthalmologist to the Pennsylvania Institution for Instruction of the Blind, at which place he made many scientific investigations and did much clinical work. His interest in the welfare of the eyes of the children under his care never lessened. In 1879 he became connected with the Eye and ​Ear Department of the Pennsylvania Hospital which he raised to the high standard of efficiency which it at present enjoys. He was emeritus surgeon at the time of his death. He was consulting ophthalmologist in the Pennsylvania Institution for the Deaf and Dumb from 1883 until his death.
Dr. Harlan occupied the first chair of opthalmology (later emeritus) at the Polyclinic and School for Graduates in Medicine and his remarkable teaching abilities will be long remembered by many of his students.
He became a member of the College of Physicians of Philadelphia in 1865, the American Ophthalmological Society in 1873, the Wills Hospital Ophthalmological Society in 1876, the Philadelphia County Medical Society in 1876, the Medical Society of the State of Pennsylvania, the American Medical Association and the American Otological Society in 1882. In 1893 he was elected president of the American Ophthalmological Society, and in 1904 chairman of the Section on Ophthalmology at the Universal Exposition held in St. Louis, Missouri. He was president of the Association of Wills Hospital Residents and Ex-residents and dean of a similar association in St. Joseph's Hospital, Philadelphia. He was also a member of the Board of the American Hospital for Diseases of the Stomach up to the time of his death.
His contributions to this special branch of medicine were important and numerous. His book on "Eyesight and How to Care for It," published in 1879, enjoyed a large circulation, and his articles on "Diseases of the Eyelids" and "Operations Performed upon the Eyelids" in Norris and Oliver's "System of Diseases of the Eye" are justly ranked among the best expositions of the subject. At the time of his death he was associated with the editorial staff of Ophthalmology.
His operation for symblepharon and his tests for malingering are well known and extensively employed.
As an operator Dr. Harlan was one of the most careful, most conscientious and most successful of special surgeons; "as a man, he was gentlemanly, noble and unassuming, one who knew true friendship in all of its meanings." Of him, it can be truly said:
"The best and most depended upon men are those who are the most quiet in ordinary life and who possess the greatest calmness amid danger."