The History of Dartmouth College

by Baxter Perry Smith

"On his return from Philadelphia he settled in Salem, Mass., and soon afterward formed a partnership with Dr. Daniel Oliver, subsequently a professor in the Dartmouth Medical College.

"These gentlemen gave popular courses of lectures on Chemistry, in Salem, with great acceptance. Dr. Mussey remained in this field between five and six years, and attained a large practice during the last three years, averaging, it is said, a fraction over three obstetric cases a week. He had already distinguished himself as a surgeon, and in the autumn of 1814 he was called to the chair of Theory and Practice at Dartmouth. He gave in addition a course on Chemistry, most acceptably to the students, and engaged in an extended and a laborious practice.

"In 1822, Dr. Mussey was appointed professor of Anatomy and Surgery. Until the close of the session of 1838, he held this chair, and also lectured on Materia Medica and Obstetrics, to meet occasional exigencies in the college.

"In the summer of 1818 he lectured on Chemistry in the college at Middlebury, Vt. In December, 1829, Dr. Mussey left Hanover for Paris, where he remained several months. He passed several weeks in London, visited the great hospitals and museums, both there and in the provinces, and became acquainted with many distinguished men.

"Not far from this time he was invited to fill the chair of Anatomy and Surgery at Bowdoin College, which he did for four years in succession. In 1836 and 1837, Dr. Mussey went to Fairfield, New York, and gave lectures on surgery at the Medical College in that place. During the year 1837 a professorship was tendered him in New York city, Cincinnati, and Nashville, Tennessee. He decided to accept the call to Cincinnati, and for fourteen years was the leading man in the Ohio Medical College. He then founded the Miami Medical College, labored assiduously for its good six years, and then retired from active professional life, though still retaining all his ardor and enthusiasm for his chosen profession. At the close of his professorial duties in 1858, Dr. Mussey removed to Boston, where he spent the remainder of his life, and died from the infirmities of age, June 21, 1866.

"He had ever been from his youth a consistent, devout Christian, and his record is without spot or blemish.

"It was as a surgeon that Dr. Mussey came to be most extensively known. Both as an operative and a scientific surgeon he attained a national reputation.

"He cared not to make a figure, but to benefit his patient; not to gain éclat, but to save human life. He believed much in skilled surgery, something in nature, but most of all in God. So it transpired that on the eve of a great operation he frequently knelt at the bedside, and sought skill and strength and success from the great Source of all vitality. We are told that the moral effect upon the patient, and the peaceful composure that followed, were not the least of the agencies that so often rendered his surgery successful.

"But he was not content blindly to accept the dictum of those who had gone before. Every principle was carefully scrutinized, and whatever he believed to be false he did not hesitate to attack, and so his name came to be associated with surgical progress. As illustrative of this point, some instances may be adduced.

"In the year 1830, and before that period, Sir Astley Cooper had taught the doctrine of non-union in cases of intra-capsular fracture, and it was generally accepted as an established principle at that time. Dr. Mussey carried a specimen to England which he believed showed the possibility of such union taking place. Sir Astley on first seeing it said, "This was never broken," but on seeing a section of the same specimen remarked, 'This does look a little more like it, to be sure, but I do not think the fracture was entirely within the capsular ligament.' John Thompson of Edinburgh, on seeing it, declared 'upon his troth and honor' that it had never been broken. This eminent surgeon, like the disputatious Massachusetts Scotchman, 'always positive and sometimes right,' was in this instance mistaken, as the principle advocated by Dr. Mussey is now established.