John Peter Mettauer

John Peter Mettauer (1787 to 1875) was an American surgeon and gynecologist from Prince Edward County, Virginia, and the son of the surgeon Francis Joseph Mettauer. He studied at Hampden-Sydney College and took his medical doctorate at the University of Pennsylvania in 1809. In 1837 he founded a private medical school between Prince Edward Court House and Kingsville, and in 1847 he allied it with Randolph-Macon College, where it became the first medical department of that college. He trained many physicians there with his two sons. He is remembered for innovative operations: in 1838 he performed the first successful repair of a vesicovaginal fistula in America, ahead of George Hayward in 1839 and J. Marion Sims in the 1840s, and he is credited with the first cleft palate operation in the Americas in 1827. He also designed his own surgical instruments, some of which are displayed at Hampden-Sydney College. He died of kidney disease at home on November 22, 1875.