Page:American Medical Biographies - Kelly, Burrage.djvu/866

NAME MUTTER 844 MYERS of Washington, D. C, and had two children, one of whom, William, became a doctor. Dr. Mussey's death came very suddenly. 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 regained consciousness, but died the next day. Reuben D. Mussey. A Memorial Sketch of W. H. Mussey, Edward Mussey Hartwell, Baltimore, 1883. Repr. from Ann. Soc, Army of Cumberland, 1882. Repr. Cincin. Hosp., 1883, vol. xxiii, ii. Portrait. MUtter, Thomas Dent (1811-1859) A museum bequeathed, a lectureship founded, and skill in plastic surgery make Thomas Dent Mutter worthy of remembrance. He came of German and Scotch ancestry, the son of John and Lucinda Gillies Mutter, his ancestors having settled in North Caro- lina, in ante-Revolutionary days. Thomas was born in Richmond, Virginia, March 9, 1811. At eight he was an orphan and a relative had him educated at Hampden Sydney College, afterwards placing him with a Dr. Simms of Alexandria. When twenty he took his M. D. from the University of Pennsylvania (1831), but 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. Returning in 1832 he devoted himself to surgery and became an assistant to Dr. Thomas Harris in 1835 in the suminer school of medicine called the Medical Institute. Here he laid the foundation of a teaching career. The subjects of club-foot and its analogous class of affections ; the deformi- ties resulting from burns, with the institu- tion of plastic treatment for their relief of a bold, original, and successful character, and the reparation of the innumerable disfig- urations that arise from the loss or distor- tion of parts, added greatly to his renown as a surgeon. In the thorough reorganization 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 halcyon period of Prof. Mutter's career as a surgeon. From year to year his efforts increased, and his ambition expanded with the success that fol- lowed his elevation. The toil of constant preparation, the task of daily appearance be- fore his class in this arena, putting on and off his armor, and his exercise under it in the field, seemed not to oppress or weary him. Sir William Fergusson, writing in 1867, says "the greatest success recorded before my own views were made public was that achieved by Mutter, of Philadelphia, who operated successfully on nineteen out of twenty cases of harelip." "After he became a teacher," says in no unkindly tone Dr. S. D. Gross, "Miitter loved to refer to these men (Dupuytren, Louis, Listen) as his 'friends' and to hold them up to the admiration of his pupils. Like most of the young doctors who went abroad he considered one Frenchman equal to a dozen Americans." He carefully prepared himself, whether for lectures or cases, even in the minutest points and then with equal skill and firmness, with a sparkHng eye and dilating faculties, ad- vanced to his task. He had a beau ideal of the art of surgery. One weakness — though almost a laudable one — was his great desire to lead and to have personal influence. One of his biographers says he would occa- sionally adopt the old method of being called out of church or of making an appointment for a pseudo operation with his students, by whom he was adored. In 1856 a complication of gout and lung disease forced him to resign his chair, though at once elected emeritus professor by the faculty. A winter sojourn at Nice did not fulfill his expectations and he returned in 1S58 and passed the next winter at the Mills House. Charleston, with his devoted wife. His disorders returned and he died there March 19, 1859, at the early age of forty- eight, leaving a young wife but no children. His generous gift of his museum the year before he died to the Philadelphia College of Physicians, with $30,000 for upkeep and a lectureship in connection with it formed his best monument. He was not fond of writing and a some- what loosely written treatise on "Club-foot" and his edition of "Liston's Operative Sur- gery" are his only literary remains. Oddly, he never held a hospital appointment. Autobiography, S. D. Gross, Phila., 1887. Hist, of Med. in Phila., F. P. Henry, Chicago, 1897. Address by Prof. Pancoast on Mutter, Phila., 1859. Trans. Med. Soc, Pa., 1856-60, 148-154. Myers, Albert William (1872-1918) "The recording of the lamentably prema- ture death of Albert William Myers, editor of The IVisconsin Medical Journal from Janu- ary, 1910 to January, 1916, is one of the most