Category: Science
Named one of the best books of 2014 by: NPR's Science Friday, The Onion's AV Club, io9.com, The Guardian, Library Journal, Amazon.com, and More.
America in the early 1800s was an easy place to die, especially for those unlucky souls so severely deformed that medicine at the time literally classified t
Named one of the best books of 2014 by: NPR's Science Friday, The Onion's AV Club, io9.com, The Guardian, Library Journal, Amazon.com, and More.
America in the early 1800s was an easy place to die, especially for those unlucky souls so severely deformed that medicine at the time literally classified them as monsters. Enter Thomas Dent Mütter, a brilliant and audacious young mid-nineteenth-century plastic surgeon who revolutionized American medicine with his daring surgical work, pioneering the use of anesthesia, championing the sterilization of surgical tools, and advocating for a compassion-based vision for helping even the most seemingly hopeless of patients, despite intense resistance from his numerous rivals. With Dr. Mütter's Marvels, author Cristin O'Keefe Aptowicz gives us both a front-row seat to the good, the bad, and the grotesque of the evolution of American medicine and a riveting biography of a man so flamboyant, in life and in the operating theatre, that he would be crowned the ' P.T. Barnum of the surgery room.'
'Dr.Mütter's Marvels is narrative nonfiction at its best.' The Onion'sAV Club
' Aptowicz's poetic eye is ezactly what makes Dr. Mütter's Marvels a marvel itself . . . Aptowicz keeps a steady hand on her historical scalpel, even as she wields it with a winning flourish.'NPR Books'Aptowicz's prose works the same way Mütter did - with speed, elegance, and tactile accuracy.' Los Angeles Review of Books
'The cover, the title, and the topic promise the macabre and the grotesque, and this story delivers . . . A ruminative, sometimes moving work.' Omaba World-Herald
' O ne of those historical science tales that seems too weird to be true . . . Aptowicz unravels an engrossing story.' Io9.com
' A beautifully detailed biography . . . A dual portrait of the driven doctor and a medical field transformed by scientific, if sometimes eccentric, pioneers.' Nature
'The research is meticulous, and the author recounts Mütter's lifewith flair. It's a fantastic yarn . . . A compelling tale.' The Austin American-Statesman
'A fitting tribute to a long-forgotten hero of his time.' San Francisco Book Review
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