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

"Youthful looking, neat and elegant in his attire," he was described by a fellow doctor, "animated, cheerful, and distinguished in his bearing, whether observed in the social circle, or encountered, as, with his tall gray horse and handsome low carriage, he traversed our fashionable thoroughfares."

Mütter's colorful silk suits were a shocking contrast to the staid black, gray, and brown Quaker-inspired fashions found on Philadelphia's streets. But as always, he didn't mind the stares. He wanted to be memorable during his relentless attempts to curry favor with the city's best-known medical men by attending gatherings where they ate and drank and by trying to join the private societies they founded.

But unfortunately for the struggling physician, many of the doctors he tried so hard to impress thought this "immaculately dressed young man riding about Philadelphia" was "something of an intrusion." They complained that his conversation was often too full of his French masters, and how he boasted, openly and often, of their superiority, explaining how when it came to surgery, "one Frenchman [is] equal to a dozen Americans." The oft-repeated stories of the daring surgical exploits of his French idols "were not received with pleasure in every quarter." He was often accused of exaggerating, or drawing a long bow, as it was referred to in nineteenth-century slang.

"Mütter's early disappointment professionally was ironically due in part to the fact that he succeeded rather too well, both in his desire to be helpful as well as to be noticed," a Virginia historian would later note. It seemed an odd stumble for someone whose welfare and happiness since the age of seven seemed wholly dependent on endearing himself to near strangers.

• • •

With the passing of his maternal grandmother, seven-year-old Thomas Dent Mutter entered a very vulnerable type of orphanhood. His life and future were now entirely dependent on the emotional charity of people who were all but strangers to the boy.

Patrick Gibson—John Mutter's business partner and the trustee of John's will—had trouble at first trying to secure Thomas a new home. He was a spoiled boy, having been heavily doted upon by his father and grandmother, and in a time before the medical world fully understood how diseases were transmitted, there were concerns about risks a family might be taking by inviting into their home a little boy whose entire immediate family had been felled by illness.

But Gibson was able to downplay young Thomas's lack of discipline and disquieting family illnesses by shining a spotlight on his better qualities—specifically his keen intelligence and an unfailingly amiable disposition. To Thomas's good fortune, Gibson convinced a very wealthy and prominent man to take the boy on as his ward.

Robert Wormeley Carter, known as Colonel Carter for most of his life, was born into one of the best-known families in the South, and was also a distant cousin through marriage to Thomas's mother, Lucinda.

Once the agreement was struck, Thomas was taken directly to Sabine Hall, the Carter family's sprawling estate. Built in the early 1700s on four thousand acres of rich Virginia soil, right on the lush banks of the Rappahannock River, Sabine Hall had been passed down through several generations of Carters. Colonel Carter was now its owner, and there he lived with his wife, his children, and several hundred slaves.

When young Thomas arrived at Sabine Hall, he brought along everything he could from his old life: two trunks of clothing, a small toy hobby horse, and a working single-barreled gun. He also brought a Shetland pony, with bridle and saddle, and a satchel filled with his dead mother's jewelry: two gold lockets, two gold rings, a pearl necklace, and a pearl pin. He brought paintings of his parents and a small red book that contained only one thing: a drawing of his mother in ink. He brought with him a bright mind, a willful stubbornness, and a moderately effective charm.

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.