Thomas Dent Mutter

Thomas Dent Mutter (March 9, 1811 - March 19, 1859) was an American surgeon. Born in Richmond, Virginia, Mutter was orphaned at the age of 8 and raised by a distant relative. He attended Hampden-Sydney College in Virginia starting in 1824. Mutter graduated with an MD from the University of Pennsylvania in 1831 and eventually took a position as an assistant to Dr. Thomas Harris at the Medical Institute of Jefferson College. At the age of 30, he became the Chair of Surgery at the Jefferson Medical College and held this position from 1841-1856. He operated on hundreds of patients to repair deformities and became the first surgeon in 1846 to administer ether anesthesia in Philadelphia. He is best known for the “Mutter Flap” which he used in order to treat burn victims and was an early way to graft that is still used today.

The Mutter Museum opened in 1863 in Philadelphia and has a collection of more than 25,000 specimens that Mutter collected.It includes a vertebra of John Wilkes Booth, Einstein’s brain, specimens from President Grover Cleveland and a plaster cast of the Siamese twins Chang and Eng.