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ms_aprilvincent's review against another edition
5.0
4.5
-audiobook-
The Mütter Museum has been on my bucket list since I was a pre-adult watching The Mummy Roadshow on the National Geographic Channel because it's just an obvious choice for me. So yeah, lemme read this book.
Dr. Thomas Dent Mütter was a teaching surgeon who cared about his patients and believed in stuff like aftercare and good hygiene. He taught at the Jefferson College in Philadelphia and was a straight up guy who loved his job and was really nice to boot.
Enter Dr. Charles D. Meigs, the villain of this piece, also a teacher at Jefferson, whose specialty was obstetrics. This is a dude who didn't believe in germs and said stuff like, "Women deserve to feel pain during childbirth because of that apple so you put that anesthesia away, sir." (paraphrased)
We hate him.
But Mütter! He likes bright clothes and is an 18th century pioneer of plastic surgery who closes cleft palates and does skin grafts on burn victims (I already knew about this technique, called Mütter's flap, because of who I am as a person). He collects medical specimens, not to create a freak show, but to provide educational aids that will encourage medical students to view patients as people instead of individual maladies.
The title of this book implies that it's going to be about the stuff that's in the museum, but it's not, and that's why I took off a half point--for disappointment.
However, I got super into this book, listening to the whole thing in two days and being absolutely giddy over it. I highly recommend it to people who like medical history, or American history, or weird stuff, or rivalries, or whatever: read it; it's great.
-audiobook-
The Mütter Museum has been on my bucket list since I was a pre-adult watching The Mummy Roadshow on the National Geographic Channel because it's just an obvious choice for me. So yeah, lemme read this book.
Dr. Thomas Dent Mütter was a teaching surgeon who cared about his patients and believed in stuff like aftercare and good hygiene. He taught at the Jefferson College in Philadelphia and was a straight up guy who loved his job and was really nice to boot.
Enter Dr. Charles D. Meigs, the villain of this piece, also a teacher at Jefferson, whose specialty was obstetrics. This is a dude who didn't believe in germs and said stuff like, "Women deserve to feel pain during childbirth because of that apple so you put that anesthesia away, sir." (paraphrased)
We hate him.
But Mütter! He likes bright clothes and is an 18th century pioneer of plastic surgery who closes cleft palates and does skin grafts on burn victims (I already knew about this technique, called Mütter's flap, because of who I am as a person). He collects medical specimens, not to create a freak show, but to provide educational aids that will encourage medical students to view patients as people instead of individual maladies.
The title of this book implies that it's going to be about the stuff that's in the museum, but it's not, and that's why I took off a half point--for disappointment.
However, I got super into this book, listening to the whole thing in two days and being absolutely giddy over it. I highly recommend it to people who like medical history, or American history, or weird stuff, or rivalries, or whatever: read it; it's great.
anninme's review against another edition
3.0
The first half was great. the 19th century surgery information was interesting. The end wasn't as good, ended up skimming it.
brgossard's review against another edition
4.0
This book jumped around in time so it sometimes got a little confusing in the timeline of Dr. Mütter’s life. This museum is by far my favorite I’ve ever been to, so it was fascinating to learn about the man who created it.
genizah's review against another edition
2.0
Given to extended flights of hagiography, so that the sections about general medical history end up being much more interesting than the parts about Mutter. The author also has an extremely irritating tendency to end sections with some variation of "little did he know..." The audiobook reader was serviceable.
misskrislm's review against another edition
3.0
I was expecting a very different book, but was not displeased with what I received. I was led to believe this was going to be a book about the marvels in Dr. Mutter's collection, the same marvels I have seen in the Mutter Museum here in Philadelphia. Instead, I received an audiobook entirely about the life, times, work, and death of Dr. Mutter himself (extremely well researched).
librariabillie's review against another edition
adventurous
emotional
informative
inspiring
reflective
sad
medium-paced
5.0
amielizabeth's review against another edition
3.0
Fun read, wish I'd read it before visiting the museum. Fascinating and really gross at the same time. Will make you very thankful for modern medicine.