Excerpt from Dr. Mütter's Marvels by Cristin O'Keefe Aptowicz, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

It was a happy time for the young family, but a troubled time for the nation. When President James Madison declared war on Britain in June, the ensuing two bloody years of unpopular battles forced the fledgling American economy to its knees. Businesses in both the North and South suffered, but luckily for his young family, John Mutter's success continued. His businesses flourished and, as was expected during this time, so did his family.

Lucinda was soon pregnant again, and a second son was born in May 1813. She named him James, after her own late father, a beloved doctor who had died almost a decade earlier.

For a year, they were a family of four: John and Tom and James and Lucinda, living in a sunny house in Richmond, Virginia, flush with money and all in good health. But in 1814, the family's uninterrupted string of good luck began to run out.

First, baby James got sick and declined rapidly. Just thirteen days after they celebrated his first birthday, James died. He barely beat a grim statistic, which noted that one in every five children born during this period died before their first birthday. John and Lucinda buried his thin, illness-ravaged body in the cemetery of St. John's Church in Richmond, Virginia.

The family grieved all in black during a long hot Virginia summer. When autumn finally came, John thought a trip might brighten his sorrow-struck wife's spirits and improve her unstable health, but this proved to be a mistake. Lucinda only grew more ill and weak as the journey progressed, and her body finally gave out in a Maryland inn. When she died, she was only twenty-two. Her stunned husband buried her small body in Baltimore's St. Paul's Church before traveling home.

Within a five-month span, John Mutter had buried his beautiful wife and youngest son. He was now thirty-three, a widower, and a single father to Thomas, who was only three.

The year after Lucinda died, John bought a large house in Henrico County, Virginia—a gesture meant to confirm that he intended to marry again, and that his family would continue to grow. He called it Woodberry, and he tried his best to make it a home for his young son, whom he loved deeply and spoiled often. But the next few years proved to be a relentless boot on John's neck: His business and health begin to fail at an alarming rate; he was forced to sell all the furniture he had bought for his and Lucinda's first home at 5th and Franklin Streets in Richmond, Virginia, and then finally to sell that home itself. He was tired all the time and couldn't shake a rattling cough that took up residence in his chest. Sometimes he would return home from a long day of work with a handkerchief full of his own blood.

If you fell ill in the northern half of the United States, it was popular advice to go south to restore your health: the heat, the fresh air, the clean water and sulphur springs.

But if you already lived in the humid South—and especially if you ran in moneyed circles—you were told to go to Europe.

And so, in 1818, John Mutter left his young son behind and sailed to Europe with the hope that their doctors, the climate, and their medicine could bring him back to his former self. John assured everyone that he would make a full recovery, and even brought with him both a secretary for his correspondence and a private physician who would ensure his well-being every leg of the journey. But perhaps even he knew the truth: Before he left America, he penned a detailed will.

John Mutter said good-bye to young Thomas, now seven, on an autumn day in Virginia, placing him in the care of Tom's grandmother, Frances Gillies, his late wife's widowed mother. The boy sobbed at his father's waistcoat once the carriage had been loaded. With his usual charm and a reassuring smile, John promised his son that he would return to him as quickly as he could, before climbing into the carriage and being driven away.

Excerpted from Dr. Mütter's Marvels by Cristin O'Keefe Aptowicz. Copyright © 2014 by Cristin O'Keefe Aptowicz. Excerpted by permission of Gotham Books. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.