Hampden Sydney College - Kaleidoscope Yearbook (Hampden Sydney, VA)

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ln all respects the most remarkable of his performances along this line is his manu- script work on surgery. It would be endless to attempt to make one appreciate this by giving quotations to show how clear was his analysis and how finely chosen was his phrase. I should almost prefer to attempt to arouse your appreciation by the well-known method of the Dutchman who described Dr. .Iohnson's Rasselas. s'Dot vas quite a leedle buke, he said, mein bruder writ a buke more as five times as big. Dr. lVlettauer's surgery contains about 3000 pages of manuscript, closely and most clearly written on the old blue legal cap paper of his day. I am glad to say that l have the original, and, I assume, the only draft of this manuscript, and a truly remarkable piece of work it is. I have no means of knowing why the book was never published. It could hardly have been for the lack of money, since Mettauer numbered among his loyal admirers many persons who would probably have been delighted to show ap- preciation for the benelit conferred by his skill, and to take on themselves the charges necessary to bring the book to light in case the doctor was unable to attempt it at his own expense, and this latter is by no means probable, since Mettauer, from the super- abundance that he might have gathered in, appears to have had quite money enough at all times for his needs. The book shows an intimate and enormous knowledge of all the directions that surgery in his time took, and not a little of the choicest fruit of elegant acquaintance with the older literature is scattered here and there throughout the work. The description of tuberculosis orchitis is, perhaps, especially striking. l-le says: Young persons of strumous constitutions are the chief subjects of this affection, and the epididymis is more frequently the seat of the morbid deposits than the substance of the gland. The adven- titious deposit presents the same appearance as in the lungs and lymphatic glands, con- sisting of small isolated masses rarely larger than a pea or in the form of inliltrations, which, after a time, transmute the testis into a yellowish, curdy, cheese-like substance. The deposition may take place into the cellular tissue of the organ, or in the seminiferous tubules, which most commonly are its recipients. There is always more or less enlarge- ment, induration, and change in the shape of the testis, and the disease begins insidiously, is painless, free from tenderness under pressure, and often remains stationary for months, or even years in some instances. Finally, however, the scrotum becomes adherent and of a dark hue: the tuberculous matter softens, resulting in abscess, which sooner or later bursts, forming an ill-looking ulcer. So great is my interest in seeing full justice done to the genius of Mettauer that I am seriously contemplating some extended work in the way of a biography. To this I relegate more detailed mention of his writings, and in it I hope to give some ex- tended and valuable extracts from the surgery. ln 1875, in the month of November, Dr. Mettauer was called to attend a case ot morphine poisoning a short distance from his house. He was just about completing his eighty-eighth year, but was alert and erect and as interested in his science as when in 25

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that she never saw her father without his hat on. He never attended service in the churches, and the explanation was always assumed to lie in the unwillingness either to remove the covering from his head, or to attend church wearing his hat. He would decline to take off his hat in court on the occasions when his expert testimony was sought: and the sole occasion on which a judge seems to have insisted that the doctor should be uncov- ered brought from Mettauer the suggestion that if his evidence were essential to the case he would be pleased to give it with his hat on, and that if it were not so, he would be quite as well pleased to leave the court-room, meanwhile, of course, wearing his hat. With posthumous insistence, Dr. Mettauer left directions that he should be buried with his hat on, and a coffin a trifle over eight feet long was found necessary to contain his body with this favorite article of dress and the considerable number of instruments which, along with a parcel of letters from his first wife, he directed to be buried with him. It is really not likely that lVlettauer's absence from religious and social gatherings should be put down to oddity. There is far more probability that the same lack of time for anything other than the tasks he set himself, which marked him out as a man without a pastime, also prevented his attendance on any occasion where his professional service was not in demand. Dr. Mettauer formed for the community in which he was born an affection which was little short of passion. He had numerous opportunities to come out into the great world under the fairest auspices, but he found when he tried it that he dragged a length- ening chain wherever he roamed that anchored him back in Prince Edward again. He once made a settlement, which proved a brief one, in Norfolk. He tried life in Baltimore as professor of surgery in Washington University, but soon the longing for his native scenes swept over him, and he came home to stay. lVlettauer's versatility was so truly great that he might have resented an intimation which identified him with any particular branch of practice to the exclusion of the others. Pre-eminent as he was in surgery, he certainly did resent what he considered the invidious attempt of some of his brethren to classify him as a specialist in that direction, and, though he would have scorned a consideration which rested solely on his writings, these were, in magnitude and in force, enough to malce the magnum opus of another man. I have in my possession a very large number of manuscripts on various medical and even quasi medical topics. These were produced in his most active literary period, from l825 to l845. Among them are articles and essays on yellow fever, congestive fever, puerperal fever, Asiatic cholera, continued fever, remitting and intermitting fever, and a most interesting article on the prophylactic use of drastic purging in the early treatment of puerperal fever, etc. During these years he was a most voluminous and valued contributor to nearly every medical journal published in this country, and on my book-shelves are un- counted piles of the older journals containing contributions from Nlettauer, to which the editors well-nigh uniformly assign the place of honor in their magazines. 24

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manhood's prime. A walk through the snow made his feet wet, and in the urgency of his long-continued and successful struggle to sustain animation in his patient, he neglected his own risk and took a deep cold, which, in the course of a short time. developed into pneumonia, and in two days he was dead. Surely he crowned a useful life with an heroic death. 50, when our work is done, might we also well wish to pass away: our final act an act of healing, and meeting death as those who have often overcome him and have no need to fear the time when, in our turn, we shall be overcome. But a few days ago I stood in an old graveyard, beside the spot where, his triumph and his labors now long past, Mettauer lies buried. One needs not the moralizing strain of Denmarles Prince to reflect, beside that sunken and neglected grave, how swift the waters of oblivion flow. Great as he was-untiring, bold, resourceful, zealous, a prodigy in his age and a prophet of the time to come, he leaves behind no monument more durable than this slight tribute which your courteous attention enables me to pay to the memory of John Peter Mettauer. GEORGE BEN joHNsToN, M. D., Richmond, Va. 'iff' .9'L.. H344 0 I x X A ZQQQSQQ. -2.65 EGR f ' 'fify .li--Fifi? ' ' Gow Z 8 . 3 guuulmnmulu J 26