Dr. Mütter's Marvels: A True Tale of Intrigue and Innovation at the Dawn of Modern Medicine
By: Cristin O'Keefe Aptowicz / Narrated By: Erik Singer
Length: 8 hrs and 54 mins
Heads up? Has NOTHING to do with Mutter’s Marvels… a bio, people… which is a category I’m sooo fond of!
Having listened to and loved The Butchering Art, I’d seen the cover for Dr. Mutter’s Marvels, and I was captivated, enchanted by what I was sure was to be some gruesome detail work. And by the way? The dude did NOT have an umlaut in his name when he was born; he added it cuz he could, feeling all European and such all.
Nope, this is strictly a biography of a larger than life kinda guy, and it also has a wee bit of the history of the time (Early to mid 1800s) of Philadelphia and over in Europe.
I thought I’d hit the Gory Jackpot when I’d seen Dr. Mutter’s Marvels on sale; after all, The Soap Woman and her perpetual mouth in a scream had just been described and mused upon in macabre detail in Still Life with Tornado. And the opening of the book does indeed have us introduced to Mütter as he lovingly fondles a replica of a woman’s face with a great growth like a horn sticking outta her head. Plus, then we’re onto his death, and there’s a bit of a frazzled hurry to find a home for the eccentric’s oddities whilst the man is still being lauded and eulogized. Ahhhh, and the first chapter is called, “Monsters” and all that the disfigured had to endure in the day. People turning their heads in shame, faces split apart by cleft palates; or women whose dresses have gotten too close to open flames, turning them into torches, forevermore to cover their melted faces with their shawls, their mouths frozen open in screams.
Ooooooh, creeeeeepy?
Yup, and that’s about it…
Which is NOT to say that I didn’t like the book, not by a long shot; it was vastly entertaining. For author Cristin O’Keefe Aptowicz this was obviously a labor of love. Meticulously researched, drawing upon personal correspondence along with scholarly articles along with a PLEthora of other avenues taken to flesh all this out, this is a truly entertaining look at a vivid and vibrant man’s life. He was a dandy, if you will; from an early age as an orphan and ward, his circumstances did NOT hinder him from cutting a dashing figure and spending ooooodles of money on snappy outfits. Only Mütter could get away with performing Uber-bloody surgery in pink silk.
Flamboyant, yes; flashy, certainly. But he was much more aside from that. Even from his earliest days as a teacher, he initiated a style of teaching that was a give and take between lecturer and students. He championed the use of ether as anesthesia in a day when most were just given slugs of wine or other liquor to dull the pain. Mostly, however, he was beloved by the Monsters who knew they could find relief under his scalpel, and compassion during the process. Cleft palate? No problem! His was a careful and meticulous approach, a series of actions punctuated by stepping back and gently caring for his patient’s woes.
Charles D. Meigs is set up as Mütter’s nemesis, an outspoken and judgmental man who brashly chaired Obstetrics and said women were fairly worthless and who had to be upbraided lest their modesty prove to be their demise. He was harsh, and he was thoughtless, and he thought little of Mütter’s newfangled ideas: Care for 24-hours post surgery? Pshaw! Empathy for the patient? Double PSHAW! Aptowicz casts Meigs as an almost-villain compared with the glowing terms she uses for Mütter, but I s’pose, whilst I questioned the veracity of such a pigeonhole, I did appreciate it in the sense that it made this nonfiction work flow like a piece of fiction.
Action! Blood! Cleverness! Cutting edge contemplations followed by mind blowing implementation! Aaaallll done whilst arrayed in flamboyant silks!
Erik Singer does a MARvelous job with the narration. Aptowicz imbues much of the text with the drama of new ideas coming upon long-held beliefs, the new and better way challenging The Way It’s Always Been Done. Singer does the outrage of Meigs, the fawning appreciation of Mütter’s students, the desperation of Mütter’s Monsters and their tearful relief at such positive outcomes, to go with the vibrancy of Mütter as he lived his life as well as possible. When things start drawing to a close, Singer slows his pace to go with the flamboyant doctor’s declining health, his desperation to leave a legacy, his mark. And by the time Mütter’s chronic illness up and kills him, the listener is left with a bit of a lump in the throat as this has all been written so well, narrated so vividly.
Well, that’s what it was like for me at any rate. I did soooo hope for more of what-all “marvels” he left behind, but aside from a truly briiiiiieeeeef bit of what was left for the museum created in Philadelphia, there was precious little to be found within the not quite 9-hours of this audiobook. Plenty of disappointed readers left their verklempt reviews, esPECially if they’d been to the Mütter Museum, wanting more of the bizarre. But I dunno, yeh yeh yeh, I’m a big ol’ rubbernecker who canNOT turn away from a train wreck and all that, but I found it truly moving how much compassion the man brought to the profession at a particularly brutal time in the history of medicine and science.
That and?
Dude, the man washed his hands before and after surgery! Isn’t that enough?!?
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