John Peter Mettauer was the son of Francis Joseph Mettauer, an Alsatian surgeon, who came to America under Rochambeau and after the Revolution settled in Prince Edward County, Virginia, near Farmville. He married Jemimah Gaulding, probably née Crump. Their son, John Peter, born in Prince Edward County.
Mettauer attended the grammar school of Hampden-Sidney and in 1805 entered Hampden-Sidney College, but left before graduating and in 1807 entered the medical school of the University of Pennsylvania. There he heard the last lecture of the great Dr. Shippen and was a pupil of Rush, Wistar, and Physick. He received the degree of M. D. in 1809, and returned to Virginia to practise.
During the War of 1812, Mettauer lived in Norfolk, and for one term, 1835-36, he was professor of surgery at Washington Medical College, Baltimore; but except for these brief intervals his long medical career was carried on entirely in his native county. A scholarly 3, 000-page manuscript work on surgery, in existence as late as 1905, is now lost. Most of his articles were signed "John Peter Mettauer, M. D. , LL. D. , of Virginia, " but the source of the LL. D. is not known. In the last week of his life, in his eighty-eighth year, he performed three successful operations: for cataract, stone, and amputation of the breast. He died of pneumonia and was buried in the College Church Cemetery at Hampden-Sidney.
Mettauer is remembered for his development of innovative surgical practices. Patients flocked to him from all parts of the United States. He kept from forty-five to sixty surgical cases constantly under his care. Over 800 operations for cataract and over 200 for stricture of the urethra are recorded to his credit. A pioneer in genito-urinary surgery, he was also among the first in America to extirpate the parotid, ligate the carotid, and resect the superior maxilla. In lithotomy he was second only to Benjamin W. Dudley, having operated seventy-nine times by 1853. His operation for cleft palate (1827), the third by an American surgeon, received widespread recognition. Most of his work was done before the day of anesthesia, and most of his instruments he made himself. His chief technical innovation was the use of lead sutures in the treatment of vesico-vaginal fistula, an operation which he first performed, successfully, in August 1838, ten years before it was done by J. Marion Sims. In 1837 he organized the Prince Edward Medical Institute, which in 1847 became the Medical Department of Randolph-Macon College, with himself and his two elder sons constituting the faculty. His clinic was one of the most noted in the country. The prospectus for 1851-52 advertised a "handsome and chaste edifice, " a ten months' course recognized by leading medical schools, and an infirmary where "surgical operations are frequently performed. " The school was suspended at the outbreak of the Civil War, and never reopened.
Articles by Mettauer, appearing in nearly every medical journal in the country, prove that his interests extended beyond surgery. He wrote frequently on puerperal fever, and is said to have first suggested the use of iodine in scrofula. His paper on Continued Fever in Middle Southern Virginia from 1816 to 1829 (1843) shows that he early recognized typhoid fever as a distinct disease.
Tall and austere, never attending either social or religious functions, Mettauer was eccentric but respected. He wore on all occasions, even while at meals and while operating, a high stovepipe hat. His daughter said she had never seen him without it, and he left instructions that he be buried in it.
Quotes from others about the person
Sims called Mettauer one of two men who "stand out in bold relief amongst those who have devoted some time to this subject, " the other being the famous French surgeon, Jobert.
In spite of his peculiarities, four women married him: Mary Woodard, of Norfolk, by whom he had two sons; Margaret Carter, of Prince Edward County, April 14, 1825; Louisa Mansfield, of Connecticut, 1833, who died in 1835; Mary E. Dyson, of Nottoway County, Virginia. He had at least ten children; three of his sons studied medicine.
