Career
At Dr Stephens' invitation[4][2] Clossy undertook autopsy work in Dr Steevens' Hospital from 1752 to 1756, and was a member of the Medico-Philosophical Society, which gave him an expertise in pathology. He also contributed articles to Repository. After a period of unofficial work for Mercer's Hospital, he was appointed a physician there from 1762 to 1763. His 1763 Observations on some of the diseases of the parts of the body; chiefly taken from the dissection of morbid bodies is considered among the first systematic studies of pathology in the English language[1] and drew on his work in Dr Steevens' Hospital and St George's Hospital, London.[5]
He emigrated to New York in September 1763, where he had been promised a job at a planned military hospital. Having learnt that this hospital plan was floundering, he took up lecturing in anatomy,[1] advertising the lectures in the New York Gazette and Post Boy on 17 November 1763 which were received "with delight".[3] He was eventually employed as a tutor and then professor of natural philosophy in October 1765 at King's College. In 1767, he became the college's first professor of anatomy, making him the first college professor in a medical subject in North America.[1] During his lectures, Clossy used the bodies of enslaved people for dissections.[6] The American war of independence and his declining health led him to return to England late in 1780, where he spent 4 years trying unsuccessfully to find a new appointment.[1] He addressed a sworn memorial to the Committee Appointed by Act of Parliament for Enquiring into the Losses and Services of the American Loyalists on 8 July 1784.[3]
He retired to Dublin with a pension, dying there on 22 August 1786. He had been elected an honorary fellow of the Royal College of Physicians of Ireland in 1784.[1] On 12 May 1759[3] he married Elizabeth Leech in St Andrew’s Church, Dublin,[4] who survived him along with a daughter.[1]
