Summary:
Those who are familiar with the Mütter Museum
of the College of Physicians of Philadelphia, best known for its anatomical
oddities, may have wondered about the institution’s namesake. The author of this book, a poet and native of
Philadelphia, endeavors to place Thomas Dent Mütter within
the context of 19th-century American medicine.
We learn here that notwithstanding being “medicated” with
wine, surgical patients emitted such agonized screams that observers were known
to vomit and pass out in their seats. We learn that Philadelphia was a cesspool
of infectious disease for which there was no effective treatment. We learn too of the rivalry (including behavior
that would be considered unprofessional today) between the well-established
school of medicine at the University of Pennsylvania (Mütter’s alma mater)
and upstart Jefferson (whose faculty Mütter would join).
In an era before the germ theory of disease became widely
accepted, there was of course no concept of sterile technique. To suggest that a surgeon should wash his
hands was to imply he was not a gentleman because “all gentlemen were clean”
(page 104). Resistance to anesthesia was
based not so much on concerns about potential danger but on the notion, when it
came to obstetrics, that pain was a punishment for the sins of Eve. Doctors could be downright sadistic to their
patients, to the point of beating them like livestock. That there was no concept of surgical aftercare
meant that patients would be sent home immediately following an
amputation. Victims of grotesque tumors and disfiguring accidents were
considered “monsters” who lived lives of unimaginable misery.
Enter Mütter, whose importation of
plastic surgery from Paris to America brought hope to thousands of incurables. He had an intuitive sense of the role of
cleanliness in reducing morbidity and mortality. He was a passionate advocate for anesthesia when
it was seen as little more than a fad. He
abandoned traditional teaching methods that held a professor should be distant
and unapproachable, and became beloved by generations of Jefferson students.
In short, Mütter emerges as not just a
likeable guy, but the forerunner of a whole new concept of what a good doctor
should be, a sort of cross between P.T. Barnum and Mother Teresa.
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