him to do it. be president of the university of kentucky had issued the same request to adolf roth -- adolphe raab, and he cannot do. but because vanderbilt wanted to, it was an outstanding student, if a ligament of his class and a phenomenal basketball player, didn't mean wallace want to go to vanderbilt. his whole life he had wanted to get out of the south, to get out of segregation. ..

and that is what interested him. so it wasn't because he would be a pioneering make history. it was in spite of it. the mac watch this and other programs on line at the tv to work. >> kristin o'keeffe recounts the life of an 18th century reconstruct researchers, dr. thomas stenson router. the author examines the medical practices which include use of anesthesia, pre-and postoperative care in the operating room. it's about 45 minutes. [applause] >> thank you for coming tonight.

it's an honor to introduce kristen. she's one of my oldest friends in the world did we met 18 years ago last month at the old alamo draft house that got demolished at the poetry slam when she was running good slant in cbg piece when she was 18, nick junior sold. she's been working on this book almost the entire time we've known each other. she started screenwriting at nyu and discovered the story i wrote an amazing screenplay and it got made into a short town is one of the worse for the contest, which you can view in the youtube page. it's an amazing and a hint of the amazing that this book will be. after she won the screenplay award, she didn't give up on this story. it's one of the longest time i've known any of my friends to work on a project.

the culmination is so amazing and i'm so proud of her. so price-cutting crooked star review, library star review and people are just raving about it. i'm so proud of her. kristin o'keeffe afterwards. [applause] >> dance, everybody. welcome to the "dr. mutter's marvels" book event. i'm so thrilled to be here. editor to finish riding this book because i got a grant to support riding this book and i lived in new york city and $25,000 does not pay anything in new york city. but it does in austin. thank you for your cheap tacos come your public transportation. today i'm going to give you a talk about what i love about mutter. at local poets read from the book so you get a chance of what it's like.

i'm an obsessive nerd and i'm excited about the subject matter site take a long time. ps there's gory images so i apologize in advance if you need anything bread for dinner. the book is about thomas mutter. it's a cold destination. it's a museum for medical oddities. they would say unusual pathological specimen. i grew up in philadelphia and i went to see the fourth grade to sixth grade, eighth grade all throughout high school, never knowing the sorry plight was founded and that is what got me interested in the story i ride in dr. mutter. the thomas mutter with mary to these people, john mutter and lucinda mutter. they were while leveraging and become a successful merchants. his wife is very low that it made two sons. within seven years the entire

family except for tom died, which is not unusual in the 19th century. you have diseases that would ravage whole families, whole towns and cities. he was sent to live with his grandmother and grandmother passed away. they try to find a home for him, but he was the of a child. no one wanted the kid. but he eventually found a home here in sabine hall, which is the home of the king carter family at this out if any of you remember that from seventh grade social studies. and robert hardaway says guardian. he supported his education, but did not support what mutter considered important, which is his clothing. even as an orphan work, he won it to the very great and is emblematic of the person who would later become. he realize this. he realize this can take a perform, which is take a charge his clothing bill to a school and earn scholarships to pay it off. so he began just charging all

this money. he got blasted cigars and hats and just kept turning academic scholarships. it did not work or long. they stopped giving them money and he got in a lot of trouble. he also had an illness his entire life. they didn't have antibiotics. german derby was now president of the modern microscope was used. the diseases that hate you again and again and again. he was in college and decided he wanted to be more ambitious and go to yale. he was incredibly felt by disease, constantly coughing up. he came back to get a diagnosis and met with doctors who were unlike any other doctors he'd known before. back then in the 19th century did not need a medical degree to practice medicine. you could or could not apprentice. he essentially put a plaque about and that was it. common treatments were purging,

bleeping, drinking mercury was also possible. sometimes the treatments may be safer if you had never done anything at all. it is that the doctors who were at the edit to him and treated him like an individual, not as a disease to be cured, but a person who's suffering needed to be alleviated and that became his calling. he knew enough moment he wanted to be a doctor. if you were to study and early 19th century company would study here in philadelphia, the place where i was born. it did look like they stirred vigorous time. philadelphia was the home of the first-ever medical school founded by benjamin franklin and later would become home to the second vanguard of medical school, which is jefferson and we will talk about that later. to give you an idea of what philadelphia is like in this time period, anytime period, a time periods of research period, anytime. love researching, i will bring up a local poet who has been in has been missing for 11 years

here and he is going to read a book about 19th century was like. welcome to the stage, just night. [applause] >> so i started reading the book and i was struck with this dashing handsome charming figure and then kristen asked me if i would come read and i thought well, of course. and then i looked at the passage she sent. chapter 11, the root of the problem. crushing poverty had become an everyday fixture of philadelphia life. one neighborhood, the small area between fifth and eighth streets from lumber to his daughter had become so created with the city's most agreed in classes that it earned the nickname the exact did district. a reporter from the evening bulletin investigated the harrowing neighborhood among the 4,005,000 people who lived there so wretched that he felt

incapable of reporting the full horrors to his readers. this area of the city less than a mile from our jefferson medical college held at classes seemed like a different world could never fight circles in which the doctors at the city drink imported french wine while diving in oysters, terrapin, quail and ice cream. and in fact did district, it is common practice for shops to charge a penny for a meal made up entirely of scraps bagged -- i'm sorry, entirely of scraps back at the factories that well. unable to afford even a little list of five passes, it is a common pastime for one enterprising individuals to secure room at a boarding house for 12.5 cents a day and then sublet as many sleeping spaces as could fit at the bargain price of 2 cents per head. the police and fire department at the time were of little hole. the police were known as

watchmen because the uniformed men could and often did lock themselves in specially construct a watch box is to protect themselves from the same criminals from which they were supposed to be protecting their communities. the watch box method would be abandoned however when rioting mobs realize they could simply destroy the watch boxes until the police officers. the fire department was deeply troubled. the all volunteer companies for neighborhood ace and just like the neighborhoods they swore to protect them a somewhat respectable while others were the workers as one doctor later observed. the more humble and gentle. for instance, the goodwill would fight anything at any time. boundaries, factories and mills of all kind could be found within the city's borders. mills for spinning cotton and

weeping wall. factors of locomotives, fire engines and chandeliers. factory philadelphia proves, nearly one fourth of the nation's steel in the city's 12 sugar refineries made at the country's largest single supplier of commercial sugar. to keep this extraordinary confluence of business is going, the fact race, mills and boundaries needed workers. but the city's exploding population always seem to contain more eager workers than were needed. philadelphians were often forced by circumstance to accept abysmal wages for what invariably proved to be long hours of relentlessly grueling work. unskilled factory operatives, pull levers, shipyard workers and carpenters were paid less than a dollar a day to work 14 hours a day, six days a week. most factories recognize only the fourth of july holiday and vacation and sick time were of course nonexistent. then had to compete not only

with each other for these backbreaking jobs, but with children as well. and a time before was prohibited child labor, factory mill owners were happening to put the youngest children to work in one dramatic case the dramatic case the typo class works near kensington employed 300 people and its industrial plant. at the 300 employees, 225 for boys, some not yet eight years of age. young girls were not exempt from the furious mob of factory work. the areas matchstick factories in particular sought them out, pain which of $2 the girls happily took work to keep food on their families tables, having no idea of course that they were being slowly poisoned by the fact or is dangerous chemicals. the girls worked long hours in poorly ventilated rooms, looking around chemical coated fingers to help process so many small slivers of word, so difficult to see them keep track of in the fighting and what was started as

simply two things in painful swollen gums was swiftly evolve into rotting tissues. they were covered largely been absent for so deep the boat could be seen and would be a file selling discharge. it became so common that would eventually earn a nickname, foxy job, phosphorus being the active agreement on trade and greedy. if the slow disfigurement with accompanying brain damage in inevitable organ failure were terrific and not come in the chemicals the workers ingested daily cause the expos job undset beeson outperformed girls tu quoque mesh wait in the dark. despite all the advancements of the time, the medical profession simply could not keep up with the increasingly deadly health challenges that this newly industrialized city presented in one of its largest failings was in women's health.

[applause] >> he is the father of two daughters. i'm sorry to give the harder we job. i grew up in philadelphia so i subsidized a minute i would be what my family did not then. back to the medical world. so mutter added this chaotic city filled with disease, deformity and troublemakers and study medicine at the university of pennsylvania. the sort of understanding what it looked like, i'll give you an example. this is an illustration of what they used to teach people about the human body in a time before cadavers and my patience in front of medical schools were being used. so this is one of four images you would typically see. one would be holding its own skin in his hand. it would be the muscles removed and new york inseminate the last bit of skeleton.

this is what you would use to understand the human body back in the medical field at that time period. it introduced a new concept to medical studies at the time period, which was the clinic. to bring life patients in and showed the students to teach them in real-time and real situation. the racemic sample of the photo of the anatomy course at jefferson medical college. the man in the middle was actually a student of motors and this time dissecting the body. i should go through this quick way. it gives you an example of the difference between learning of what you had previously learned and what this new one with you like. mutter was particularly obsessed with the formulae. he said. he cited nevada's medical to create university of pennsylvania and immediately went to where you need the best

surgeries were happening, which was paris, france. paris, france come all the citizens got free health care because of that the hospital system is funded in very specialized. one of my favorite facts about the parisian medical system by the time. which hospitals were laboring women. hospitals for old people and you do to hospitals for the treatment of. one for women, which was horrendous. they have better success rate, but a funny thing you have to agree to prior to being accepted. you had to be whipped publicly and you would enter the hospital. for several months of grueling treatment and as soon as you are perfectly healthy, you'd be whisked again to be sure you do your lesson. among the things happening was a burgeoning new field called operation per seat or as we know plastic surgery. we think of it in modern times

as lip augmentation, the plastic surgery that really means plastic, malleability. use your body to heal in a deformities or defects by accident. this is an absolutely new field because as he might not now, all the surgeries were done prior to the discovery of anesthesia. the people going through surgeries were absolutely vitally. they had been in charge of holding the person down as they struggled and crashed against the surgeon. so usually you do not agree to a surgery unless it was life or death. so i like the surgeries, which a lot of plastic surgeries would be were very rare. this was a time before germ eras as i mentioned before. if you're lucky enough to survive having surgery done by way, was common for you to die of infection. just to give you an example, for her one soldier that died in the

battlefield, to dive in the hospital from infection. so that is how tremendous infections were. so to houseman who could perform and heal people such as the one you see on the board was absolutely revolutionary must absolutely revolutionary of us that happening in america and mutter wanted to bring it back. the one in the center was not into mosh. the woman in grants to groups in the center of her fired and of her fired and hit it about her ill. but a surgeon found wrapped surgeon found throughout and it was successfully removed. from the own collection, you read first chapter of the book. this is an example of a mutter surgery, which we can talk about before, but events were accidents for sometimes he would lose it through in this one will talk about moore, a woman with severe burns, which was surprisingly common during this time. so mutter had two things going for him. he was extremely talented and ambitious in terms of surgery.

he was ambidextrous with quick and knew inherently about cleanliness and a time before germ theory was proven. it was probably because he was a patient and knew the difference between a dirty doctor cleaned up dirt and how that would affect them. he was also extremely empathetic and a time. where there was this emotional detach between doctors and patients, which to be honest we still struggle with today. you have to imagine when we think about someone falling off a leg while you're still awake is the person whose leg is being sought. imagine being a person despite years of your life studying to help heal people, knowing you would have to cause pain in order to do what needed to be done. you had to have emotional detachment, but mutter did not have better quality. he trusted people and wanted to be clear, have them join him on this journey which made him so

popular. he came back to philadelphia to make a name for himself and become a professor at clash with another doctor who was the main antagonist of the story, which is this guy. this is jefferson medical college and mrs. charles teammate. that they both taught -- jefferson medical college as we discussed before is a vanguard medical is too should bring in new things to the forefront such as surgical clinics and patient clinics. they also brought the most brilliant minds in surgery and medicine to one faculty. the problem is they were all crazy geniuses who did not want to work with each other. in my research i found this via thin faculty meeting for america to reach other surgeries and heckle each other. is that jefferson had a knife, fired the entire faculty and decided to bring back one more aligned with the vision and unity. it just so happens that mutter was selected as the chair of

surgery, the youngest person there at age 31. he got in a medical degree at age 21 and the oldest member of the faculty took over as chair of the dispatcher asked. again, they have clashed before there would be much clashing to come. to give you an i.t. of how he was different and how he viewed his patience and bring up another local poet who met in new york city when he was the louder arts reading series in new york and he is going to read a selection then introduces charles. welcome up austin owns come a whole foods at carrere. [applause] >> so yes, when christine asked me to do this, she introduced this piece as a terrifically misogynistic excerpt from a medical lecture from this gentleman, doc dirt makes.

and i was a little taken aback. what made you think i would be so perfect for this particular excerpt? said the woman grimaced, her sex open to the classroom full of young men. see this unobvious apparently vile lump of animal tech share dr. charles teammate asked his collection of student gesturing to the women's. here in the inner court of the temple of the body, how can you study this subject sufficiently. women possess a peculiar trait that is modesty. he continued as he walked any

firmly placed another pillow between a woman's legs. it is one of her most charming attributes. but skin her position and her position in civilization and it is easy to perceive better intellectual force is different from that of her master and lord. and i say her master and lord and it is true to say so he continued as he casually repositioned the woman for maximum exposure, moving herb affixed to the edge of the table, pushing her thighs at right angles to her quaking trunk. the great administrative faculties are not hers he continued. she plans no sublime campaigns, nor these armies to battle or fleets to viy.r fleets to victory. and society, she is still in bonds, by custom and politics. she composes no iliad, no animated. do you think that a woman could

have developed in the tender soil of her intellect among the strong idea of a hamlet where they met as? no. the eggs walk to the table, which displayed the tools of his trade, speculum since couples, powders come a stack of handkerchiefs and a large chart of properly star bleaches. he dipped his fingers in a bowl of olive oil and i've been slowly together as he looked back at the woman. such is not woman's province, nature, power nor michigan. she reigns in the heart her seat and drove out by the hardest job , the household altars or place of worship and serve as he said walking towards her. she was staring at a wall in front of her, her hands balled up with it caught in chief. she has a head too small for

intellect he said, her hair, but looking to his audience. but it is just big enough for love. [applause] >> so that's an actual speech that he gave to his students that he was chair of obstetrics four. n-november when i got to it, could she conceive of hamlet or mac back? now, if you only knew who was riding your story, dude, you would be so mad, so not. but again, i was actually an incredibly common mindset. he was one of the most, and voices and obstetrics. you have to look at it through the 19th century. modesty prevented women from seeking treatment for their conditions at an early age. they believed only there their

husband should see their bodies or what their conditions get terrible prior to seeking treatment. when they went to the doctors, they often would be shy about showing them anything. the title of the chapter references in exchange that he had with one of his patients, which he was like i'm going to have to look at cr body in order to assess what is wrong with you and she said i would rather die than let you see my body. he said what women want, god wants to. and then he left the room. that is what he taught his students to do is very different from how it triggered treated his students and was once true to themselves so faculty of 41 was the new faculty. mutter is at the top of the mixes at the bottom and they would reign for 15 years am broke and an influence most transformative powers of medicine that we know. this is the surgical clinic that mutter was known as the pit. this was taken in the 19 century

and you can tell there's a woman in the room. women were not allowed in the college except for patience for the duration of mutter's reign there. but he was able to have access to the most amazing innovative materials during his time there and was able to do surgery that push the boundaries of any age anybody had experienced. he also thought really hard for things he thought were important. the preoperative care and postoperative care which were revolutionary thoughts that end. he wanted recovery room, which they first turn him down for, but he could not believe what they were what they would do to these patients he had, which was essentially, no matter how dramatic, they would immediately put in an unwashed,, unsanitized by again and written over philadelphia's cobblestoned all the way home and dropped off. he just rented out some rooms of the restaurant and to the south.

he was able to create the one he's most famous for. the variation of the woman before. you have to imagine the the 19th century, then dressed with many layers, flammable materials and they cut in front of an open fire. so it did not take a lot for them to have their outputs be taught in the bound body created almost a chamber, each amy for which erica and rush through and these women were unable to escape through the power of flame and they would have severe burns on their neck and face. this is a time. when women were completely dependent on men. they were not allowed to own property. they could get livelihoods but it would not be enough to support a family and frequently the family would move the stone and horrified that they would have been living for the doctors and would not seek treatment at all. this is a common problem for which there is no solution, so

mutter came up with one. we know today skin grafting is a concept to hear these sorts of things in the earliest days they try to do a comic did did not work. for one, you didn't have cleanliness, so if you just move a piece of skin over without washing your hands, it will likely can infect dead and none that women would die out and he didn't have the technology to keep the skin healthy. but mutter realize something very import, which is if you catch a little flap of skin attached to the body and then turned it around, that little flap of skin would help pump and keep that part of the skin alive and he created something called the mutter flap, which is used in surgery today. to give an example of this, he would take the clean, undamaged skin, cut out the damage skin of the women's bureau, face or cheek and then swing it around and reattach it with sutures.

he would. he was bandaged up and keep it meticulously claimed at a time that was not considered to be par for the course. in fact, he actually spoke out against handwashing because he said that to make doctors do that would be to imply that doctors aren't gentlemen because all gentlemen are clean man. again, it is often the minds of the 19 century. one of my favorite phrases in my research which kind of helped me understand why people would put up with this was the phrase is stiffer the blood, the prouder to be the surgeon, which meant when he went to researching your expected band to be covered in the viscera of their former patience as proof that they are trustworthy. that is not how i would do it today. i would not like that even for him. so mutter would put them in the recovery room and watch these women religiously and transform

them back into human beings. back then was a medical term, just like he was in so they literally made unmade monsters with the surgery. but again, you have to remember all of this was done while the patients were awake. mutter did not have the intimate he thought he should have any was very arrogant and were very flashy clothing, but in philadelphia that was not the way to do it. one of my favorite stories is one of the wives would comment on how he would match his suit when he arrived at parties. so he published a lot of textbooks that were influential, so he decided to publish a textbook and so we put it out as the equivalent of england at that time period known as the fastest night at the west end. he was famous for saying time voice before saw a mouse clicks. one of my favorite stories was

that he performed a leg amputation at the hip that actually killed three people. yet a person holding the man down and he was cutting off the lake and accidentally cut the assistance fingers off. the assistant shop a while back, knocked over a tray full of tools and they flew through the air and hit a spectator in the audience who saw the knife coming at him and thought that he had been hit and died of fright. later in section would kill both the patient and the assistant and today they said this is the only century in history with a 300% mortality rate. so together they did put out a book is extraordinarily detailed about the quickest, cleanest best way to perform the surgeries and mutter focus and preparing the human body for these events being transparent and clear and getting patience on your site via the little did he know within a few months of publishing this book would

become almost obsolete in his mind because of the invention and discovery of ether anesthesia, which was a game changer in the mind of mutter. one month after anastasia was discovered, he performs the first surgery in philadelphia at jefferson medical college removing a tumor of the cheap. within a few months, weeks actually have that happening, the operation from ether was banned at the hospitals throughout philadelphia because they thought it was a satanic influence, bobby mann is there reason and mutter had to be a huge proponent, moving people towards anesthesia adaptation wherewithal beyond her. the first thing i thought doctors are used for farming so when you communicate to your patient passing out because of blood loss. holiday perform without the?

number two, madison was not regulated at that time period. so when you got a jar of ether, you had no idea if you are using too little or too much because it would be different. you have either the person waking up or killing the person. number three, germ theory. without clean hands and toes, just as many people died of infection. the doctors didn't want to take the risk. as you might imagine, knicks had an opinion on this. he was and take their anesthesia. while mutter with giving these wonderful lectures, miggs would bring in chief and killed them with ether to prove the dangers of it. he also used to heckle other surgeons come asking them are you going to perform and ether surgery today? if he said yes coming he would say i hope your patient dies. one of the surgeons, the famous painting was somewhat sad so upset that miggs type sameness with two people that when they said are you performing each are

anesthesia surgery today and he said yes, i hope your patient dies. lie hope your back at the gates of heaven by a flock of sheep. last night it was a good one. but mutter at that point was i forgot this, i'm not going to focus on publication. i'm going to focus on the generation of influence leaders. i'm going to focus on these new generations and teach them. it was a golden time, but one that would be way too sure because he was ill man in a realistic couldn't fight his illness forever. one of the biggest problems was hereditary gout. it is an inflammation of the joints. this is actually a specimen from the mutter museum of hands the fact did with gout. these things are very important. mutter went back to paris to see if anything could be done for his condition and he said it was a matter of getting better but

how long he had to live. they beg him to stay in paris and they could take care of them but he wanted to make sure populations of people largely ignored by medicine for the generations of doctors that continue to help them, so went, so went to philadelphia and spent the last two years of his life doing two things good one, teaching generations about yours that they could do everything he could do, which was sort of an conflict. he loved the idea of being a singular, genius, one person who could help people, but he realized how damaging that would be to the population, so he began to say you don't have to be a genius to do this. you just have to be a hard worker and listen to people. there's many beautiful lectures that illustrate that. the book has over 80 illustrations in and every single would cut you see an actual patient of mutter. the unfortunate died very young at the age of 47 in the second thing he wanted to make sure it would have been as this collection of unusual medical specimen would be collected. you have to think of the 19th

century. we did not photograph them again have obviously cameras, so the only time you would see something unusual, something that might only have been two or three times in your career is if you collected it in a jar or? model or strange illustration. mutter had thousands of these unusual specimens in a found a home and created the museum in philadelphia, which we all now know. this is what it looks like today. that is mutter. his portrait in the corner. they dedicated to my research of the book, which i'm really happy about. this little thing like here is what i thought was a? model. so when i die of the 19th century for disease, know that i died doing what i love, which was i don't know, touching dirty feet. [laughter] to close at this talk, i will read the last section of the book of ministers of the quote of one of my favorite speeches

of tomas mutter. thank you again for coming out, austin. it is no place of rest he taught his students. it is no rest, that effort. steady continuous mtv dean accepts. 100 years after his death, the legacy does not rest. it lives on in the surgical tape as he created, which are still used today in the innovations of institutions created by the young man who learned from him what it meant to be a good physician and his namesake museum, the mutter museum in philadelphia. therefore the modest price of admission, you can stand in front of giant skeleton or marvel at it: the size of a small cattle, extracted from a man known only as the uman balloon or ofccourse into the face of madam to mosh, the french widow who one day prove a horn and was? model for which he carried with

him across an ocean. there you will find a woman, her body had been turned into waxy soap lake substance after her death, freezing her false mace into a perpetual scream. over the past century and a half, the museum collection has grown to include tumors, custom presidents. the drug brains of madmen and geniuses, to form skeletons and delicate glass cases, civil war surgical tools still and drag like anything but death cast of the famous sideshow i come a pair of conjoined brothers who inspired the term siamese twins. all of this can be found under one roof and also watched over by the one -- in portrait of dr. thomas dent mutter. in time, his old friend would say at the museum, he has left a

precious heritage of the profession and what started out as a public home for his ambitious private collection is now involved in to one the most popular science museums in the united states, where tens of thousands of people came every year to be intrigued and odd and provoked by fantastic collection of. like mutter himself coming to challenge the visitors to see past their own shot and initial repulsion and instead find the humanity of the people whose remains are on display here while these bodies may be ugly, though late mutter curator once wrote, there is a terrifying beauty of the spirits of those forced to enjoy these inflections. every refresh groups of scientists and doctors came to me cm and study the holding and perhaps hope the long founder to finish his timeless mission to alleviate human suffering. it was a goal mutter believed was possible and one he believed all people should strive regardless of background, earth,

skill or innate talent. placed on dependence on your genius, even if you possess them. your great talent, industry will improve them. if you have moderate challenge, industry will supply deficiency. nothing is applied to well directed labor in a snappiness of pain without it he taught his students and believed it apply to everyone, including a specially himself. this is no place of rest. our work should never be done and it is the daydream of ignorance to look forward to that of a happy time when we shall wish for nothing more and have nothing more to accomplish. thank you very much. [cheers and applause] >> thank you. i'm going to drink my water. so i think we are having a q&a. >> we are.

>> if anyone has any questions, anything they wanted to look at and give the 19th medical advice, i do have leeches in the back. [laughter] yes. >> hello. >> hello, hello. >> so i'm curious if your research since you are looking that this book for so long, if any of the facts are in a tree adverse artist on its way into your poetry since you are a poet. >> so, i did read six books of poetry here in austin, texas and some of the images didn't work their way in there. i found the influence in this project to be greater. poetry teaches you to take one sort of situation or action or event in tease out a larger meaning of how would have greater value. that is great in research because you can see something and say wow, this is a metaphor for what would have been later and presented enough way.

i'm also part of the poetry slam community and if you don't know, you perform your work lies in front of people who are looking that you and i think also that may be aware of telling a more complete story, to make sure that all the voices i could find to be represented in this book. so their stories of working class, stories of women, people of color to make sure it's not just all about these pretty privileged.her's. mutter obviously had his struggles, but people have to love wurster in that time period, so i think i backgrounded poetry made me realize how many voices need to be captured in the story. great question, great outfit. [laughter] any other questions? this fantastic looking gentleman in the back. >> hey, so above point

insurgents become really elite in terms of their income? at that time of surgery -- are surgeons and medicines still highly regarded a quiet >> that is a great question and i also want to acknowledge who is telling it. please give a big round of applause for the men who did the amazing cover of my book, the incredible dan winters. [applause] he's got a fantastic beard that is very civil war asked. so i'm a big fan of beard. in terms of surgery, i will say this about the 19th century surgery. night teen century medicine in general, where you came in as a station in life to really helped you in every other area except for surgery. if he wanted to be a family doctor, obstetrician would be helpful to be a wealthy person to attract other wealthy people to trust you. the surgery especially at the time before anesthesia, you just

wanted whoever was quick to maclean and to get the job done and it didn't matter where you came from. your rich buddy doing a slow amputation is not what you want. but some guy who grew up on the back side of the tracks but could survive you, that is one of the things he was attracted to was the one field of medicine where you could be judged on your scale and not you were born into. he did make a very good living, but he did not take time other than his fantastic slow day to enjoy it. he's out of the hospital at jefferson medical college and had to be open year-round and not just in school was open. so that took up most of his life and most of this year. what he did make a good living and they did pay well. even back then. hooray. >> hello.

riding something for over 10 years is an incredible milestone. what was your motivation to help you through that process? >> thank you. that's a great question. i first walked into the archives 15 years ago this december. but i will say this. the reason it took so long was in large part because of my own insecurities as a rider. i was largely self-taught. i have never studied nonfiction riding them and never studied history let alone medical history and i came across the earth i was so fascinating and i love doing the research, but i thought it would other person like me ride a book about this. so for years i just would tinker with him tinker with it and look at it and go somebody's going to ride this book and it's going to be so good. and then i put up my first nonfiction book, which is worse in your face, which was a 20 year history of the new york city poetry slam. i was a figure in the, but still

pulling to get together all these disparate narratives into one story, that took five years. i said if i can do this, why not you if no one is telling the story and he was an incredible man whose story should be told and no one else is doing it, why not me? i went to the mutter museum in top to the director of the museum, an incredible man. if you've ever seen the youtube channel, they have additional leeches they need to be fed human blood and so every six months he does the youtube video of him feeding these leeches his own blood. that is one devoted museum director. and he welcomed the end. i worked with the previous director who passed away in 2004 and he said anything you need from us we will do. we put up grant applications in the university of pennsylvania gave me year-long residency to read and research this book. it was lucky enough to get a residency after that in a national and i'm up for the arts fellowship which brought me here to austin.

so it is a matter of putting yourself out there in saying this is something i feel passionate about and i want to do it. if i'd done that earlier, the book would have been written quicker, but i had to fight through my own insecurities. i'm grateful for the wealth of support not only the art community, but the science community and i'm really proud of the end product. a lot of it has to do with it comes to riding projects, you can't do this, no one will read it here believe me, i've had my low moments. i was in between residencies and i was like sleeping on a friends couch in philadelphia in may for the sick are okay? this is going to be great. it's all going to work out. someone will publish it. it's all cool. she's like you are not doing great. but it all worked out. even in your low moment, keep moving forward and keep doing the stuff that is valuable to