Surgeon-Professor-Author-Benefactor

Dr. Thomas Dent Mutter, M.D. graduated from Hampden-Sydney College in Hampden-Sydney, Virginia. He received his medical degree from the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, PA. He furthered his medical training for one year at the University of Paris in Paris, France. He was an eminent plastic surgeon and reconstructionist. Dr. Mutter was the professor of surgery at Thomas Jefferson Medical College in Philadelphia from 1841 until 1850. Dr. Mutter endowed The College of Physicians of Philadelphia with $30,000 and stipulated that the College must hire a Curator and erect a brick building to house his personal collection of medical information and artifacts which included over 1700 anatomical and pathological items. The building was erected and is known today as the Mutter Museum in Philadelphia, PA. The original museum was completed in 1863 at 13th & Locust Streets. It was later moved to 19 South 22nd Street. Dr. Mutter's first office was located in the old Willing Mansion which was located at the corner of Third Street at Spruce in what is now Philadelphia's Society Hill section. Dr. Mutter was the author of many medical periodicals and journals. He wrote a pamphlet about the medicinal benefits of the Salt Sulphur Springs of Monroe County, Virginia (now West Virginia). The old stone Sulphur Springs Hotel, at which he stayed, is now a private residence. He also submitted an essay entitled "Club Foot." He was the author of numerous other scholarly works as well. Dr. Mutter was orphaned at the age of eight and was raised by several maternal relatives in Virginia. Although his father left him but little due to the mismanagement of his assets during his illness, he was well provided for during his formative years. Colonel Thomas Dent, his namesake, who was a close friend of his father, left him an estate valued at forty thousand dollars. For a short time, following the death of his father, he lived with his widowed maternal grandmother Gilles in Alexandria, Virginia on Prince Street between Washington and St. Asaph Street. She was the wife of noted physician Dr. James Gilles. His widowed grandmother died shortly thereafter. Folowing the death of his grandmother, young Thomas was then sent to live at Sabine Hall Plantation. Mr. Robert Carter, a relative by way of the Carter-Armistead line, raised him at the plantation for the next several years. That Carter line descended from the wealthy Tidewater planter "King Carter." During his days at Sabine Hall, young Thomas was educated by John Lewis in Spotsylvania County, Virginia before studying medicine under Dr. Sims of Alexandria, Virginia while attending Hampden-Sydney College. Dr. Thomas Mutter married Mary Wright Alsop. They did not have children. The Wright-Alsop family is a prominent Connecticut family.
"The world is no place of rest. I repeat, it is no place of rest but for effort. Steady, continuous undeviating effort. Our work should never be done and it is the daydream of ignorance to look forward to that as a happy time, when we shall wish for nothing more, and have nothing more to accomplish." Dr. Thomas Dent Mutter, M.D.
Dr. Thomas Dent Mutter died in Charleston, South Carolina at The Mills House Hotel which is still in opeartion in Charleston's Historic District. Dr. Mutter had been suffering for several years with the same hereditary affliction as his father; hereditary gout. He sought the same "European Cures" as his father. He was in Nice, France before he returned to the United States. He decided to live in Charleston during the winter of his return rather than face the severe Philadelphia winter. He died there in March of 1859.
NOTE: There is a triple entry gothic mausoleum with the family names of ALSOP CHAUNCEY MUTTER inscribed above each doorway in the cemetery. The remains of at least four Mutters; John Mutter, Lucinda Gillis Mutter, Thomas Dent Mutter and Mary Wright Alsop Mutter are interred there.