Page:A cyclopedia of American medical biography vol. 2.djvu/240

 MUSSEY

212

MUTTER

181 S. He went as a boy to Moore's Indian Charity Academy, Hanover, and various other schools, then wlien twenty- nine gave up a grocery business in Cin- cinnati and entered the Medical College of Ohio, graduating M. D. in 1848, at the same time studying with his father and practising with him three years.

In 1851 he had a profitable two years in Paris as pupil of Ricord, Trousseau and Bernard, and was elected president of the American Medical Society of Paris, re- turning to Cincinnati in 1853, and during the war acting as surgeon to St. John's Hospital for Invalids. He with Cincin- nati business men organized also what was perhaps the first voluntary military hospital in wartime.

After serving in various positions dur- ing those dark days he was associated with Gen. I. F. Wilder and in 1862 became medical inspector in the United States Army and lieutenant-colonel. \Mien a j^ear later his health broke down he went back to Cincinnati and held the chair of operative and clinical surgery in the Miami Medical College, being also later surgeon-general for the state of Ohio with the rank of brigadier-general.

Most of his writings were published in medical journals, specially the "Western Lancet" and "Medical Observer," of which he edited the surgical columns. But his best gift to Cincinnati was that of 5,000 volumes and 2,500 pamphlets as a nucleus of the Mussey Medical and Scientific Library as a memorial of his celebrated father.

On May 5, 1857, he married Caroline W^ebster, daughter of Dr. Harvey Lind- say, of Washington, D. C, and had two children, one of whom, William, became a doctor.

Dr. Mussey's death came very sud- denly. He operated at the Cincinnati Hospital on the morning of July 31, 1882, and spent some hours afterwards with his patients. But in the afternoon he was stricken with paralysis and never re- gained consciousness, but died the next day.

R. D. M.

Hartwell (Edward Mussey). A memorial

Sketch of W. H. Miisaey, Baltimore, 1883.

Repr. from Arm. .Soc, Army of Cumberland,

1882.

Repr. Cincin. Hosp. (1883), xxiii, ii, port.

Miitter, Thomas Dent (1811-1859).

A museum becpieathed, a lectureship founded, a life well lived and skill as an anatomist shown make Thomas D. Mutter worthy of remembrance.

He came of German and Scotch ancestry, the son of John and Lucinda Gilles Miitter, his ancestors had settled in North Carolina, in ante-Revolution days. Thomas was born in Richmond, Virginia, in March, 1811. But at eight he was an orphan and a relative had him educated at Hampden Sidney College, afterwards placing him with a Dr. Simms of Alex- andria. When twenty he took his M. D. from the University of Pennsylvania, but, it was overwork perhaps, his health failed and he went as surgeon on the corvette Kensington, bound for Europe. He is next seen eagerly studying the methods of master minds at European clinics.

While making a reputation as a public teacher in the medical institute, he achieved a high reputation as a practi- cal surgeon, as attested by his large clien- tele among the citizens and the strangers from various parts who sought from his skill the relief which their various suffer- ings demanded. The subjects of club- foot and its analogous class of affections about the joints; the deformities result- ing from burns, with the institution of a plastic treatment for their relief of a bold, original, and most successful character, and the reparation of the innumerable disfigurations that arise from the loss or distortion of parts, had already adminis- tered greatly to his renown as a surgeon, and exercised his abilities as an author.

In the thorough re-organization of the faculty of Jefferson Medical College which took place in 1841, he was promoted to a higher place of usefulness and honor by an appointment to the professorship of surgery in that institution.

From this date began the halcvon