This week's book:
Dr. Mutter's Marvels: A True Tale of Intrigue and Innovation at the Dawn of Modern Medicine
By Cristin O'Keefe Aptowicz
I would never, ever have read this book if it wasn't for my reading challenge group.
This book is about how surgeons used to do their jobs on their patients hundreds of years ago. At the time patients weren't put under before "surgery", and everything was dirty in the operating room. After the surgeries were done, the patient would be taken home right after in a filthy carriage.
The book focuses on a doctor named Thomas Dent Mutter. Dr. Mutter thought patients needed pre and post care after surgery, so he would work with the patients before to make sure they were truly ready for surgery, and then he wanted recovery rooms for his patients as well for post surgery. He trained in France and used what he learned to create different kinds of plastic surgery for burn victims. Mutter also changed the way teachers taught their students, instead of just lecturing and giving one large test, he would ask questions and give little quizzes to make sure his students understood the material.
The book could become dry, and let's be honest it does every so often, and then the author would drop some story about a doctor that killed three people during one surgery (the patient and two of his helpers), or someone had a forty-five pound scrotum tumor. Where Dr. Mutter was compassionate and ahead of his time in surgery and his teaching style, there was also Dr. Miegs who was a "gynecologist" of sorts and was creepy.
Miegs treated women subhuman and just gives off yucky vibes the whole book. He trained his students to put leeches directly on women's uterus. There were a few chapters all about abortions at the time and how truly horrible doctors were to women, which with all that is going on with Texas right now it hit a little close to home. He made a large speech that stated he wasn't a fan of masters raping their slaves at the time, not because rape is a truly horrible act, but because it muddied the pure Aryan blood to mix races. He also didn't trust ether either; he went as far as to actually kill many sheep by overdosing them in front of many classes to show that it wasn't right to let patients feel the pain during surgeries. When sanitizing surgical tools and being clean became something that doctors actually started caring about Miegs was on the wrong side of history again.
It should not be a surprise that Mutter was a very clean well put together man that was always keeping his workspace clean, completely thought having pain free surgeries would be a great idea, and never had slaves and would only hire free men while making sure they were paid well. Mutter reminded me a bit of Alexander Hamilton is some ways. Both of these men watched their loved ones die dreadful deaths at early ages and seemed to have a fire for what they thought they needed to do before they both died too soon.
Even though there are sections that can be sort of squeamish, I would definitely recommend this book. It reads like fiction when it's actual history.
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