Dr. Mutter's Marvels
Page 27
In 1863, the Mütter Museum opened, billing itself as the permanent “repository for specimens, models, historical instruments and many other unusual medical memorabilia and incunabula” that Mütter had collected from all over the world.
The largesse Mütter gave to the organization along with his collection would be spent not just for lumber, carpentry, bricklaying, painting, and plumbing, but also for the acquisition of new cases and jars needed to accommodate the more than two thousand specimens. The salary for the museum’s curator came from Mütter’s trust, which also paid for an annual lectureship so the community could hear and learn about the latest innovations happening in medicine. And even more important to Mütter, any student of medicine or current doctor could attend the Mütter lecture series, or visit the collection and attend a lecture, “without charge or fee.”
The Mütter Museum, 1863
Early Interior of the Mütter Museum
Around this time, John H. Brinton, who was perhaps Mütter’s most devoted protégé, was following his mentor’s footsteps in numerous ways. After Samuel Gross’s retirement, Brinton would take over as chair of surgery at Jefferson Medical College, the position Mütter had held for fifteen years. Brinton would also become chairman of the committee on the Mütter Museum, and—inspired by Mütter’s example and Brinton’s own experience as a Civil War surgeon—would found the Army Medical Museum, to preserve unusual medical specimens collected by doctors at war.
In 1880, Brinton was asked to give a speech at the Tenth Annual Meeting of the Jefferson Medical College Alumni Association to share his memories of the famous Faculty of ’41.
Brinton recounted for the crowd, to peals of laughter, the exploits of those early days: the sharpshooting street urchins who hit Mütter’s students with snowballs as he led the class on yet another field trip in an overstuffed omnibus; the school hospital, which during Brinton’s time had been “[a] stove-maker’s room and [a] bottler’s upper stories,” and how when it was his turn to staff the clinic, he would use the small stove there to cook himself a “savory oyster” and “a steaming midnight cup of coffee served by the order of a crafty Faculty to ensure the wakefulness of the [exhausted] watcher”; the story of Meigs and the etherized sheep that refused to die.
John H. Brinton
He spoke about each faculty member individually, but he saved his memories of Mütter for last. Brinton remarked on how Mütter was “beloved, nay almost worshiped by his class,” before he praised him as a teacher (where “his great charm lay in his enthusiasm and in his power of imparting something of his own spirit to hearers”), as a surgeon (showing “powers and capabilities which shone so conspicuously”), and as the originator of the Mütter Museum, which Brinton believed made good on “the anticipations and cherished hopes of its founder.”
“Time in his flight brings many changes, levels many landmarks, wipes out many names,” Brinton said in the conclusion of his speech. “Yet I feel sure that through the mist of fleeting years, which is fast settling down between us and those of whom I have spoken, their figures will not wane but rather stand out with an increasing grandeur. For in good truth this Faculty of 1841 were men of mark. Some were great men . . . all were great professors . . . and we owe them much.”
• • •
“This world is no place of rest,” Thomas Dent Mütter taught his students. “It is no place of rest, I repeat, but for effort. Steady, continuous undeviating effort.”
One hundred and fifty years after his death, Thomas Dent Mütter’s legacy does not rest. It lives on in the surgical techniques he created and which are still being used today; in the innovations and institutions created by the young men who learned from him what it means to be a good physician; and in his namesake museum, now located on Twenty-Second near Market in Center City Philadelphia, which has only grown in size and popularity since its original 1863 opening.
There—for the modest price of admission—you can stand in front of a giant’s skeleton. Or marvel at a colon the size of a cow, extracted from a man known only as the Human Balloon. Or, of course, peer into the face of Madame Dimanche, that French widow who one day began to grow a horn from her forehead, and whose wax model had so bewitched Mütter, he had carried it with him across an ocean.
There, you will also find a woman dubbed the Soap Lady, her body having turned into a waxy soaplike substance after her death, freezing her small face in what looks like a perpetual scream. There are skulls collected from around the world, with details of their death carefully transcribed in ink on the surfaces of their bones—such as Julius Farkas, age 28. Protestant, soldier. Suicide by gunshot wound of the heart, because of weariness of life or Girolamo Zini, age 20, Rope-walker. Died of a broken neck. There, you can read from books bound in human skin, a doctor’s final gift to a grieving family: the story of a man’s health covered in leather made of his own flesh.
The Mütter Museum Today
Over the past century and a half, the museum’s collection has grown to include tumors cut from presidents, the jarred brains of madmen and geniuses, deformed skeletons displayed in delicate glass cases, Civil War surgical tools still caked in dried blood, and even the death cast of Chang and Eng Bunker, the famous sideshow act, a pair of conjoined brothers who inspired the term Siamese twins. The Mütter Museum was asked to do Chang and Eng’s autopsy—an endeavor successfully led by none other than Joseph Pancoast’s son, William Henry Pancoast.
All of this and more can be found under one roof, and all of it is watched over by the dashing portrait of one man: Thomas Dent Mütter.
“Thus, in dying,” his old friend Pancoast would say of the museum, “has he left a precious heritage to the profession.”
What started as a public home for his ambitious private collection has now evolved into one of the most popular science museums in the United States, where tens of thousands of people flock every year to be intrigued, awed, and provoked by its fantastic collection of artifacts. And like Mütter himself, the museum challenges its visitors to see past their own shock and initial revulsion and instead find the humanity of the people whose remains are on display.
“While these bodies may be ugly,” the late Mütter Museum curator Gretchen Worden once wrote, “there is a terrifying beauty in the spirits of those forced to endure these afflictions.”
And every week, fresh groups of scientists and doctors come to the museum and its library to study its holdings, unlock its clues, and perhaps even help its long-dead founder to finish his timeless mission: to alleviate human suffering. It was a goal Mütter believed was possible, and one toward which he believed all people should strive, regardless of background, birth, skill set, or innate talent.
“Place no dependence on your own genius, even if you possess it. If you have great talents, industry will improve them; if you have but moderate talents, industry will supply their deficiency—nothing is denied to well directed labor; nothing is obtained without it,” he taught his students, and believed it applied to everyone, including and especially himself. “This world is no place of rest. . . . Our work should never be done, and it is the daydream of ignorance to look forward to that as a happy time, when we shall wish for nothing more, and have nothing more to accomplish.”
Thomas Dent Mütter’s Portrait as Seen in His Museum
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This book would not have been possible if not for the extraordinary force that was Gretchen Worden (1947–2004). Her relentless efforts to open the museum up to the greater public during her long tenure as the director of the Mütter Museum allowed hundreds of thousands of people to experience the strange wonder of its collection, including a school-age me growing up in Northeast Philadelphia. Gretchen would later offer me—a lowly undergrad with a hunch—full access to the museum’s archives and library to begin my research into Mütter’s astonishing life and times, which a decade and a half later has resulted in this
book. Gretchen’s joyful light, sharp wit, and determined passion were a constant source of inspiration and comfort, and the sadness I feel that she didn’t live to see this book is gratefully tempered by the fact that her influence can be found throughout it . . . and throughout me as well.
In the course of writing this book, I have been extremely lucky to work with generous institutions that have allowed me access to their collections, as well as with the charming and brilliant champions of knowledge who call those institutions home. These heroes not only gifted me with their time, wisdom, and insight but also laughed at my terrible jokes and, on more than one occasion, sneaked me slices of cake from their office parties. To these saints of research, I salute thee:
Robert Hicks, Anna Dhody, Annie Brogan, and Evi Numen at the Mütter Museum at the College of Physicians of Philadelphia;
F. Michael Angelo at the Thomas Jefferson University, Archives & Special Collections, Philadelphia;
Nicole Joniec and Sarah Weatherwax at the Library Company of Philadelphia;
Jamison Davis at the Virginia Historical Society;
Michael Frost at Yale University’s Sterling Memorial Library;
Benjamin Bromley, Anne T. Johnson, and Gerald Gaidmore at the Special Collections Research Center at the College of William and Mary Swem Library.
And lastly, special thanks are owed to the late Virginia historian Richard W. Slatten D.D.S. (1925–1990), who, in 1983, wrote a small paper on the life of Thomas Dent Mütter, mining heavily the resources at the Virginia Historical Society. Though the work was never published, Slatten thoughtfully sent a copy to the Mütter Museum. It was an immensely helpful document to use as reference, especially in terms of seeing Mütter’s story from the Southern perspective.
I am also greatly indebted to several arts organizations and institutions which helped support and fund the creation of this book. I express sincere thanks and gratitude to:
The University of Pennsylvania/Kelly Writers House for gifting me the 2010–2011 ArtsEdge Writer-in-Residency;
The Mütter Museum at the College of Physicians of Philadelphia’s Francis C. Wood Institute for awarding me their 2010 Wood Institute Fellowship;
The National Endowment for the Arts for awarding me a 2011 Fellowship in Literature;
The Berkshire Taconic Community Foundation for awarding me their 2013 Writer-in-Residency at the Amy Clampitt House in Lenox, Massachusetts;
And the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the Hamptons International Film Festival, and the Greater Philadelphia Film Office/Philadelphia Film Festival, all of which supported my earliest efforts to capture Mütter’s story.
In order to pursue my dream of writing this book, I had to leave behind three important families in New York City: my fantastic coworkers at the Artists Rights Society; my fellow rabble-rousers at the Bowery Poetry Club; and the inspiring poets whom I am lucky enough to call friends within the New York City poetry community, especially at the NYC-Urbana Poetry Slam. I want to take this moment to thank them for all of their glorious and buoying support.
It took several vagabond years to research and write this book, and I am grateful to the following people who opened their homes to me during stretches of this project:
In Philadelphia: Stephanie, Joe, Bernadette, and Claire Napoleon; Kevin, Katie, Cian, Lucas, and Declan Aptowicz; Ed, Jeannie, Violet, and Oliver Garcia-Wong; and F. Omar Telan;
In New Jersey: my parents, Maureen and Bruce Aptowicz;
In New York City: Susan Rice; Caitlin, Leo, Camilo, and Ramiro Trasande; Jeff, Jan, and Sarah Kay; and Taylor Mali and Rachel Kahan;
In Boston: David Pantalone;
In Chicago: Shanny Jean Maney and Roy Magnuson;
In Albany: Daniel, Maisie, Miriam, and Beatrice Nester;
In Vermont: Wess Mongo Jolley and Ivan Goguen;
In Austin: Ernie Cline and Libby Willett-Cline; Derrick Brown and Jessica Blakeley; and Anis and Alexis Davis Mojgani.
I also thank each of the following friends and colleagues who read and offered valuable suggestions to parts or all of the manuscript: Aaron Myers, Seth Myers, Anne Horowitz, Amy David, Susan Rice, Derrick Brown, and especially Alexis Davis Mojgani, Sarah Kay, and Ernie Cline.
Enormous thanks are owed to my literary agent, the dazzlingly fantastic Yfat Reiss Gendell, whose belief in this project and in me as its writer was absolutely instrumental in pushing it to where it is today. Thanks as well to Erica Walker, Cecilia Campbell-Westlind, and the rest of the Foundry Literary and Media family.
A special debt of gratitude is also owed to my editor, the sly, insightful Charlie Conrad, as well as his whip-smart assistant, Leslie Hansen, who have made me feel fortunate at every step of this project to have been able to work with them.
And grateful thanks goes to the incredible photographer and artist Dan Winters for gracing this project with its stunning cover, and this grateful author with her amazing author portraits.
Finally, I offer my most humble and grateful thanks to the following people who played an important part in this project every step of the journey:
Jeffrey Shappy Seasholtz, who sacrificed much to help me see this dream come true and for whose enduring friendship I will remain forever grateful;
Kevin Aptowicz and Katie Eyer, whose devoted, boundless support of me and this project was a necessary and guiding force;
Stephanie Dobbins Napoleon, whose friendship, care, and brilliance have sustained me for so many years, but especially during the writing of this book;
My mother, Maureen O’Keefe Aptowicz, from whom I inherited my love of reading and writing, and whose belief in me and my writing has always been deeply felt and immensely appreciated;
Ernie Cline, whose generous and unwavering support of me over the last fifteen years can be seen clearly in the DNA of my entire writing career, but especially in this project.
And lastly and always, Gretchen Worden, who made this all possible in so many ways.
NOTES AND SOURCES
Despite his flamboyant personality and outgoing nature, Mütter was rather an elusive character to research. Neither he nor his wife kept a diary, and the majority of their correspondence has been lost to history. However, I am grateful to have been able to capture his incredible story using a wide variety of source material.
The bulk of the research for this book was conducted at the Archives and Special Collections at the Scott Memorial Library of Thomas Jefferson University and at the Historical Medical Library of the College of Physicians of Philadelphia/Mütter Museum. I am grateful to both of these institutions for the access they provided me to speeches, lectures, journals, correspondence, meeting minutes, and out-of-print textbooks and memoirs, which make up much of the backbone of this book.
A few publications were absolutely invaluable to me during every stage of this book, particularly Philadelphia: A 300-Year History (Editor: Russell F. Weigley, WW Norton & Company, 1982) and American Surgery: An Illustrated History by Ira M. Rutkow, MD (Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, 1998), whose exhaustive attention to detail was matched only by the charm of their writing. Paris in the nineteenth century was so amazing, strange, and beautiful, you could write a whole book on it—and somebody did! I highly recommend David McCullough’s The Greater Journey, which was an extremely helpful reference for me during those chapters set in Paris. The Autobiography of Samuel D. Gross, M.D. by Samuel Gross (George Barrie, 1887) was also a fantastic and consistently used resource. Although Gross wasn’t always the most reliable of narrators, his tendency to be as effusive in his praise as he was hilariously damning in his criticism helped me in my understanding of the full spectrum of Mütter’s world. And lastly, I would also like to highlight the work of late Virginia historian Richard W. Slatten, whose unpublished paper on the life of Thomas Dent Mütter was incredibly helpful from the earliest stages of this project.
Any text between quotation marks
comes from a letter, memoir, speech, lecture, article, or other written document. Additionally, numerous adjectives and descriptive phrases (which are not found in quotes but are recognized in the endnotes) were mined from period sources.
The speech excerpts found throughout the book are all collected from the same speech: Mütter’s March 8, 1851, “Charge to the Graduates of Jefferson Medical College of Philadelphia,” which he gave just three days before his fortieth birthday, at the height of his career. It should be noted that the excerpts are often edited down for length and are not presented in Mütter’s original order, as my hope was that the placement of these excerpts would help to contrast or complement Mütter’s core philosophies with the action of the story.
Descriptions of people, places, and objects were often based on images I found in my research, some of which are included in this book. Descriptions of diseases and medical conditions (such as pregnancy)—including symptoms, stages, and statistics—were pulled both from publications of the time and contemporary reports created by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
All descriptions of Mütter’s surgeries were taken from his published works, and the lithographic images of patients are from his own textbook. The descriptions of specimens from Mütter’s personal collection were pulled from numerous inventory lists provided by the Mütter Museum. The wax model of Madame Dimanche, featured in the first chapter of this book, is one of the Mütter Museum’s most popular specimens and part of Mütter’s original donation. While there is no receipt of its purchase, the rareness of the specimen (the Mütter Museum model is the only one currently known to still exist) and the timing of Madame Dimanche’s surgery helped me to conclude that it was likely purchased on Mütter’s earliest trip to Paris.