Dr Mutter's Marvels

Join New York Times bestselling author Cristin O’Keefe Aptowicz as she discusses the life and career of the famous surgeon Thomas Dent Mütter as detailed in her book Dr. Mütter’s Marvels: A True Tale of Intrigue and Innovation at the Dawn of Modern Medicine. The book chronicles the remarkable life of Dr. Thomas Dent Mütter (1811-1859): a dazzling, young American surgeon who was so flamboyant and audacious that he wore colorful silk suits to perform surgery, embellished his last name with an umlaut, and was described as the “P.T. Barnum of the surgery room.”

Mütter was a revolutionary figure whose compassion-based philosophies and innovative surgical ideas and breakthroughs clashed with the constraints of his time. The vast collection of medical oddities he amassed to serve as teaching tools for his enormously popular lectures as a professor of medicine would later become the foundation for one of the most (in)famous museums in the world: Philadelphia’s Mütter Museum. A book signing follows the talk.

Cristin O'Keefe Aptowicz is an American poet & New York Times best selling nonfiction writer. Her latest book, Dr Mutter's Marvels: A True Tale of Intrigue at the Dawn of Modern Medicine was named as one of the best books of 2014 by The Guardian, Amazon.com and The Onion's AV Club (among others), and spent three months of the New York Times Best Sellers list. For more information, please visit her website.