“I think anesthesia is of the devil,” William Henry Atkinson . . . God intended them to endure!”: Ibid.
——CHAPTER TWENTY——
“a singularly handsome man”: Da Costa, “Osteitis Deformans”
slender, and graceful: Ibid.
with a clear sweet voice of remarkable strength and carrying power: Ibid.
Years after he was reprimanded at his school for wearing “a style of dress not altogether proper for a boy his age”: Carter family papers.
scrupulously neat: Da Costa, “Osteitis Deformans”
“in fact, almost a dandy”: Ibid.
“a delightful conversationalist and an admirable raconteur”: Ibid.
his lungs had begun to shudder and ache in his chest: Slatten, “Thomas Dent Mütter”
“inconceivably sensitive to pain”: James B. McCaw, M.D., and George A. Otis, M.D. eds., Virginia Medical Journal, Vol. XIII (Richmond: Ritchie and Dunnavant, 1859)
No matter what treatment he sought or to what preventive care he devoted himself, nothing helped: Ibid.
(“Few can boast of [being ambidextrous] . . . and often, many who can have in fact only two left hands,” a fellow doctor once quipped): Thomas Dent Mütter, Introductory Lecture to a Course on the Principles and Practice of Surgery, Delivered in Jefferson Medical College, November 1, 1847 (Philadelphia: Merrihew and Thompson, 1847)
The famed clinic of Jefferson College was only becoming more popular: Levis, “Memoir of Thomas Dent Mütter”
His office was flooded with the ill and injured, the desperate . . . needed to consult with him: Ibid.
“some of the greatest achievements of American surgery”: Ibid.
“In the every-day surgical operations Mütter was . . . in the Surgical Clinic”: Brinton, “Alumni Address: The Faculty of 1841”
his advice and aid in consultation: Levis, “Memoir of Thomas Dent Mütter”
“his feeble physical abilities enabled him to”: Ibid.
member of Philadelphia’s Protestant Episcopal Church: Ibid.
ward for incurables: Ibid.
“The consolations of religion supported him through his long sufferings . . . and hopefulness”: Ibid.
American Medical Association was founded in Philadelphia in 1847: Da Costa, “Then and Now”
the following year, the Philadelphia County Medical Society: Ibid.
a forum where all “respectable physicians” could meet, debate, and exchange experiences: Ibid.
bind the profession together: Rules of gentlemanly conduct . . . and to the greater public: Ibid.
respectable school, was of good moral and professional standing . . . active practitioner: Ibid.
who “prescribes a remedy without knowing its composition”: Ibid.
These societies were not only successful: Ibid.
Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia . . . Northern Home for Friendless Children: John H. Packard, M.D., ed., The Philadelphia Medical Register and Directory (Philadelphia: Collins, 1868)
“long violently opposed to [the idea of] the female doctor”: Da Costa, “Then and Now”
a group of Quakers . . . Female Medical College of Pennsylvania within the city limits in 1850: Ibid.
Woman’s Medical College of Pennsylvania . . . Pennsylvania Medical . . . against women practitioners: Ibid.
“cannot stand the strain of practice”: Ibid.
“their physiological necessities forbid the attempt”: Ibid.
“if married they will neglect home duties”: Ibid.
“not consent to only attend women”: Ibid.
“nerves are too delicate for the work”: Ibid.
expelling any of its members who dared to teach at a . . . with women physicians: Ibid.
physician at the Pennsylvania Hospital was so appalled . . . teach even one single woman: Ibid.
the first female doctor was elected to the same . . . role in the profession entirely: Ibid.
“Woman, as usual, finally had her way. . . . And yet the earth did not rock . . . stars did not fall”: Ibid.
“Anesthesia . . . I need not, on this occasion, enter upon the history . . . offspring of the New World”: The Medical Examiner: A Monthly Record of Medical Science LXXXV (January 1852)
“In England, Scotland and Ireland, and on every portion . . . in the practice of surgery”: Ibid.
“You will be anxious, I doubt not, to learn the estimation . . . advocates and inventors . . .”: Ibid.
“These operations were for many years considered almost . . . of an established operation”: Ibid.
what they considered to be “the exploitation of the manual art of surgery”: Rutkow, American Surgery
“seemingly boundless enthusiasm for questionably appropriate surgical intervention”: Ibid.
the jargon of American medicine: conservative surgery and radical surgery: Ibid.
The words took on different meanings at different times: Ibid.
sharp philosophic difference: Ibid.
Earlier surgeons would define conservative surgery . . . often life-endangering injury: Ibid.
Conservative surgery therefore was defined as any surgery “devised . . . who would hold still”: Ibid.
“The more bloody, and even the more uniformly fatal . . . cutting performed by others”: Ibid.
“And they too become partakers in the popular idolatry . . . surgery into human butchery”: Ibid.
“To answer this question in a satisfactory manner . . . it is necessary . . . pace in different cases.”: Thomas Dent Mütter, M.D., Introductory for 1844–5, on the Present Position of Some of the Most Important of the Modern Operations of Surgery (Philadelphia; Merrihew & Thompson, 1844)
“a welcome messenger”: Ibid.
“a martyr to unspeakable sufferings, and a loathsome object to her friends”: Ibid.
“It is true, that some of the French, who adopt the view . . . becomes involved, or none at all”: Ibid.
“It is urged by some, that we are justified . . . and that she must die in a few months: Ibid.
“But, gentlemen” he confessed to them, “whenever I have done so, it has been with . . . voluntarily subjected”: Ibid.
“the knife promises nothing”: Ibid.
“it will serve to satisfy the patient in part, and prevent . . . utterly abandoned by the surgeon”: Ibid.
John Watson, an influential New York City surgeon . . . “Surgery . . . better for your patients”: The Medical Examiner (1852)
The early years of the 1850s were a transformative time in Philadelphia: Weigley, Philadelphia
“The old axiom, mens sana in corpore sano . . . have been imparted to his frame”: Mütter, Introductory Lecture, 1847
“Without health . . . the professional life of a man is . . . of suffering and disappointment”: Ibid.
professional visits to Europe: Levis, “Memoir of Thomas Dent Mütter”
“numerous eminent friends”: Ibid.
how he “was greeted warmly by the most eminent medical men of London and Paris . . . their operations and consultations”: Ibid.
“favored by him with letters of introduction to distinguished medical men”: Ibid.
“found them passports at once to the society and attentions of the recipients”: Ibid.
his presence seemed “at once known among the numerous . . . pleasure seekers in Paris”: Ibid.
throngs of people who both sought his company socially as well as . . . consulted by him professionally: Ibid.
among his most “distinguished and attentive friends”: Ibid.
severe attacks of his “frequently recurring malady”: Ibid.
“You ought to conceive, therefore, of the tenor of a medical life . . . gravity of your concerns”: Charles D. Meigs, Charge to the Gradua
tes of Jefferson Medical College, Delivered March 6, 1852 (Philadelphia: T. K. and P. G. Collins, Printers, 1852)
“You must go, in and out, before the people, daily . . . touches neither extreme in anything”: Ibid.
“Therefore, we charge you: be good men, and learned men . . . of the public welfare in short”: Ibid.
“only means of securing relaxation and escaping the incessant calls for his services at home”: Levis, “Memoir of Thomas Dent Mütter”
“his only hope for healing the same painful infirmities which always oppressed him”: Ibid.
——CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE——
“The Physician Should Be an Honest Man. . . . ‘I dressed him, but God healed him’”: Mütter, Charge to the Graduates, 1851
There had been considerable improvement in ocean travel: Slatten, “Thomas Dent Mütter”
the Collins Line, which in 1850 began offering . . . the British Isles and the United States: Ibid.
ships were the biggest and fastest steamers afloat: Ibid.
A solo trip cost Mütter a thousand dollars, and that number . . . for both himself and his wife: Ibid.
his body still felt weakened and “at the point of breaking down completely”: Pancoast, A Discourse Commemorative
“a full and systematic work on surgery”: Ibid.
gathering and arranging material for his new book: Ibid.
“Merely to have breathed a concentrated scientific atmosphere . . . excellence is defied”: John Harley Warner, Against the Spirit of System: The French Impulse in Nineteenth-Century American Medicine (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1998)
“Be honest at the bedside . . . of great danger . . . ‘bourne from which no traveler returns’”: Mütter, Charge to the Graduates, 1851
“If the physician fails under these circumstances . . . agent by which an immortal soul is lost”: Ibid.
Skeletons, wax castings, deformed or defective organs . . . drawings, prints, and instruments: From the Musée Dupuytren website, translated from French by Google: http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=fr&u=http://www.upmc.fr/fr/culture/patrimoine/patrimoine_scientifique/musee_dupuytren.html&prev=/search%3Fq%3DMus%25C3%25A9e%2BDupuytren%26biw%3D1126%26bih%3D617
He had authored some of the country’s earliest articles on plastic surgery: Rutkow, American Surgery
“very explicit descriptions, including drawings”: Levis, “Memoir of Thomas Dent Mütter”
“an accurate idea of what was involved from the surgeon’s point of view”: Ibid.
surgical textbook he wanted so badly to write . . . (he would surely be forced to abandon when his health hopelessly failed): Ibid.
——CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO——
“The Physician Must Possess Moral Courage. . . . ‘shepherd must give his life for the flock!’”: Mütter, Charge to the Graduates, 1851
“there would soon be no rural population left at all”: Weigley, Philadelphia
the fourth-largest city in the Western world, as well as second-largest in the United States: Ibid.
London and Paris, from which Mütter had just returned, were much larger . . . (provided you included Brooklyn’s 266,000): Ibid.
Philadelphia’s population had even surpassed such European capitals . . . and Manchester: Ibid.
“too big and too urban”: Ibid.
the Philadelphia of the mid-nineteenth century, “one of . . . to be truly a community”: Ibid.
the large thrashing wheels of the Fairmount Dam and the Fairmount Water Works: Ibid.
“Dr. Mütter raised his reputation to the highest pitch . . . the records of science”: Pancoast, A Discourse Commemorative
“Fortune had showered so many present favors upon him . . . he wished for more”: Ibid.
“What ardent greeting he received . . . after some . . . tenderest sympathy for his suffering”: Levis, “Memoir of Thomas Dent Mütter”
it was evident to his students and peers alike that his condition was not improving: Ibid.
“During the last course of lectures which he delivered . . . burden of disease and suffering”: Ibid.
“Celsus long since urged the possession of certain physical qualities . . . mere operator . . . : Mütter, Introductory Lecture, 1847
“However, his declaration, that a surgeon would be ‘without pity’ . . . so often subjected: Ibid.
“No, gentlemen, I would say to you, cultivate your sympathy . . . to spare nothing . . .”: Ibid.
“honorable success.”: Mütter, Charge to the Graduates, 1851
“Am I to live as an influential, well-informed, and man-loving physician . . . who values them?”: Ibid.
“If you have never asked yourselves these questions, the time . . . to dishonor and despair?”: Ibid.
“I cannot admit the opinion of [the French philosopher] Helvétius, that . . . reach distinction”: Ibid.
“Starting, then, with this position, it will be my task in the lecture . . . be certainly overthrown”: Ibid.
——CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE——
“A Physician Should Be a Patriot. . . . to shed his last drop of blood in her defense”: Mütter, Charge to the Graduates, 1851
to be “split asunder”: Da Costa, “Then and Now”
Philadelphia not only allowed slavery when the city was founded . . . hubs for the slave trade: Weigley, Philadelphia
“When we contemplate our abhorrence of that condition . . . been extended to us”: “An Act for the Gradual Abolition of Slavery,” Commonwealth of Pennsylvanias Legislative Reference Bureau, http://www.palrb.us/statutesatlarge/17001799/1780/0/act/0881.pdf
“It is not for us to enquire why, in the creation of mankind . . . to counteract His mercies”: Ibid.
It wouldn’t be until 1848—nearly seventy years after the act . . . slaves living within the city: Weigley, Philadelphia
“a true American city” . . . “contained fewer foreigners than either New York or Boston”: Da Costa, “Then and Now”
“The city was not showy . . . gentleman was proverbial, and often alcoholic”: Ibid.
“Organized gangs of thugs and robbers were numerous . . . Blood Tubs and the Killers”: Ibid.
Philadelphia’s mayor was quoted as saying . . . opposed to abolition: Weigley, Philadelphia
soon legislation was created to specifically disenfranchise the freed . . . act was first passed: Ibid.
“There is not perhaps anywhere to be found a city in which prejudice . . . between them”: Ibid.
“Colored persons, no matter how well dressed . . . mean, contemptible and barbarous”: Ibid.
Philadelphia became the founding home of the American Anti-Slavery Society: Ibid.
“a place where freedom of speech could be enjoyed”: Ibid.
In a sign of solidarity with the African American population . . . entered the hall, arm in arm: Ibid.
They shattered windows, broke chairs and tables, punched . . . entire building to the ground: Ibid.
strengthen the antislavery cause: Ibid.
“everything southern was exalted and worshiped”: Ibid.
“a patriotic society to support the Union and driven by . . . (‘Love of Country Leads’)”: The Union League of Philadelphia, website: http://www.unionleague.org/about.php
“All who knew him will remember that the book . . . terrible ‘commingling of the nations’”: Meigs, Memoir
“godlike race, the archetype of the Grecian demigods and heroes”: Charles D. Meigs, M.D., Address Delivered before the Union League of Philadelphia, October 31, 1864 (Philadelphia: Collins, Printer, 1864)
“nude and barbarous tribes of the African race”: Ibid.
“Let due honor and reverence be forever rendered . . . less frequent, than murder itself”: Ibid.
“that great maelstrom”: Mütter, Charge to the
Graduates, 1851
“swallows up time and character, morals, reputation . . . and vexation of spirit”: Ibid.
“Oh, how strange a spectacle has this our ‘thrice blessed’ country . . . anarchy and civil strife!”: Ibid.
“And all for what? . . . Simply because our people, forgetting . . . the true love of a patriot?”: Ibid.
“But how fearful responsibility do those assume who dare breathe . . . predict it, defend it”: Ibid.
“Oh, could these [conspirators] but realize the glory that even now . . . in the womb of time”: Ibid.
“Go home, then, gentlemen . . . determined to do all in your power . . . bid you do this”: Ibid.
“Go home . . . and let the noble language of the illustrious . . . labored to avert catastrophe!”: Ibid.
——CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR——
Asiatic cholera killed 1,012 . . . in 1849: Weigley, Philadelphia
smallpox took 427 lives in 1852: Ibid.
Yellow fever swept into the city the following year and left 128 corpses: Ibid.
typhus . . . killing 205 people in 1848 alone: Ibid.
Dysentery terrorized the city every summer . . . more than 1,700 citizens between 1848 and 1851: Ibid.
malarial fevers spread easily and frequently in the city’s low, flat lands between the rivers: Ibid.
Ten times as many people died of malaria and tuberculosis . . . more feared cholera: Ibid.
gradually and quietly—they died “romantically,” as it was termed: Ibid.
“with terrifying speed and ugliness”: Ibid.
In 1852—the same year that smallpox killed more than 400 Philadelphians . . . tuberculosis: Ibid.
Starting in 1849, they began thoroughly cleaning streets, waterways . . . scourge of disease: Ibid.
poverty was “the wages of sin”: Ibid.
sanitary measures—instead of prayer—to fight the constant epidemics: Ibid.
“indulging in sentimentalism or speculation”: Richard Harrison Shryock, The Development of Modern Medicine: An Interpretation of the Social and Scientific Factors Involved (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1936)
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