Dr. Mütter's Marvels: A True Tale of Intrigue and Innovation at the Dawn of Modern Medicine
(Libby/OverDrive eBook, Kindle)

Surgery suffered some serious growing pains in early-nineteenth-century America, with no anesthesia, no sterile conditions, no recovery rooms. Enter Thomas Dent Mütter. The flamboyant physician nudged American medicine forward with his teaching, surgical prowess, and compassion. Mütter was the first surgeon in Philadelphia to administer ether anesthesia. He was also an innovator in plastic surgery techniques and an expert operator on burn victims and cleft palates. He advocated for clean environments for surgery. Mütter amassed a personal collection of about 2,000 unique items, including models, illustrations, and preserved anatomical anomalies. Among those specimens are a mask of a woman with a large horn emanating from her forehead, the skeleton of a giant, skulls from around the world, and Civil War surgical instruments still stained with blood. Mütter donated his entire collection of medical curiosities to the College of Physicians of Philadelphia along with $30,000. The Mütter Museum opened in 1863 and continues to be frequently visited. This book shines light on an unusual and talented doctor and the evolving medical landscape that he helped shape. Copyright 2014 Booklist Reviews.

In 1858, Thomas Dent Mütter (1811–59) bequeathed to the College of Physicians of Philadelphia his large collection of medical specimens, and the Mütter Museum remains one of the most highly regarded repositories of its kind. Little is known about the American-born surgeon whose collection took his name; none of Mütter's diaries and only a few of his letters survive, and he and his wife had no children. Aptowicz (poet and former writer-in-residence, Univ. of Pennsylvania) has penned a fast-moving and popular history of the early to mid-19th-century American and Parisian medical worlds, making the most of works by and about Mütter's contemporaries. The book connects the dots among the doctor's youthful dandyism, his attractiveness, his kindness toward his patients, and his fascination with what we would today call reconstructive plastic surgery, of which he was a pioneer. Mütter operated successfully on patients with cleft palate, clubfoot, burn scars, and other disfiguring conditions. One of several histories of the museum was written by Gretchen Worden (Mütter Museum, 2002), the author's mentor, but this is the first biography of Mütter. The finished version of the book promises to have more than "80 black-and-white historical photographs and illustrations," some quite graphic. VERDICT Written for the general public, this will be of great interest to large public libraries. Index not seen.—Martha Stone, Treadwell Lib., Boston

Performance poet Aptowicz (Words in Your Face) turns her attention to the birth of modern American medicine, and the astonishing degree to which it was influenced by one man, in this moving and delicately crafted biography. As chief of surgery at Jefferson Medical College, one of the U.S.'s first teaching hospitals, Thomas Dent Mütter (1811–1850) transformed medicine with technical innovations like the surgical skin flap that has saved millions of burn victims. Mütter instinctively understood the value of sterility long before germs were discovered—establishing cleanliness standards in hospital wards, operating rooms, and surgical recovery rooms—and viewed anesthesia as a triumph that rendered certain surgical horrors a thing of the past rather than a Satanic tool. Mütter also transformed the profession via his attitude, entertaining and involving students instead of lecturing at them, and told patients the truth about their illnesses, respecting their "right to know" a century before the patient autonomy movement. Aptowicz shows Mütter, beloved by his students, evolving from a mischievous, impatient young doctor to an increasingly spiritual man beset by premature illness, and her writing is as full of life as her subject. (Sept.)