Stanford E. Chaillé was born on July 9, 1830, in Natchez, Mississippi, the descendant of several patriots of the Revolutionary War. Educated by private tutors until his mother's death, Chaillé eventually graduated from Phillips' Academy in South Andover, Massachusetts, in 1847. Chaillé then received an A. B. (bachelor's degree) in 1851 from Harvard College and later earned his medical degree from the Medical Department of the University of Louisiana (now Tulane) in 1853. Chaillé later returned to Harvard College and received an A. M. (master's degree) in 1854. On February 23, 1857, Dr. Chaillé married Laura E. Montfort. The union produced one child, Mary Laura Chaillé. Laura E. Montfort died on August 18, 1858. Before the Civil War, Dr. Chaillé worked as a resident student in the New Orleans Charity Hospital and then served as a resident physician at the United States Marine Hospital and at the Circus Street Infirmary.

During the war, Dr. Chaillé rose from being a private in the New Orleans Light Horse Brigade to acting Confederate Surgeon General of Louisiana in 1862. In May, 1862, Dr. Chaillé became the surgeon and medical inspector of the Confederate Army of Tennessee. In July of 1863, Dr. Chaillé took the post of surgeon-in-charge of the Fairground Hospital #2 in Atlanta, Georgia, then transferred to Okmulgee Hospital in Macon, Georgia in December, 1863. While in Georgia, Dr. Chaillé met, and later married, Mary Louisa Napier.

After the Civil War, Dr. Chaillé lectured and demonstrated anatomy and obstetrics in New Orleans. In 1878, Congress selected Dr. Chaillé to study the great yellow fever epidemic, and he later sat on the Havana Yellow Fever Commission. Dr. Chaillé also contributed significantly to medical literature. Among these contributions was his formulation of infant developmental standards in 1887. From 1885 until his retirement in 1908, Dr. Chaillé served as the dean of Tulane's medical school. Dr. Stanford E. Chaillé died in 1911.