Author Cristin O'Keefe Aptowicz gives an illustrated talk on Thomas Dent Mütter, founder of Philadelphia's (in)famous Mütter Museum and subject of her New York Times best selling book Dr Mütter's Marvels. Aptowicz shines a spotlight on the good, the bad and grotesque of 19th century medicine, and on the life of Thomas Dent Mütter, a brilliant surgeon who specialized on performing radical reconstructive surgery on the severely deformed in a time before anesthesia. Mutter was so flamboyant, in life and in the operating theater, that he would be crowned the “P.T. Barnum of the surgery room.” Dr Mutter's Marvels was on the New York Times Best Seller list for 3 months, and was named a Best Book of 2014 by NPR, Amazon.com, the UK newspaper The Guardian, and The Onion's AV Club, among other. The Wall Street Journal wrote that Aptowicz "rescues Mütter the man from undeserved obscurity, re-creating his short life and hard times with wit, energy, and gusto... A reminder that the course of human suffering and the progress of medical science are often messy, complex, and stranger than can be imagined."