Description

Black leather medical bag with multiple compartments. It includes a stethoscope, bone scraper, anesthesia mask, speculum, bone saw, syringe, steel calipers, knife, forceps, skull trephine, uterine scraper, and various other tools. The copper chamber in the bottom of the bag was used to sterilize medical equipment. The tools to be cleaned were sealed in the chamber and then the chamber was placed in boiling water. When he died in 1955 at the age of 94, Dr. Charles E. Dutton was the last surviving member of the official first class to graduate from the medical school at University of Minnesota in 1889. He went on to serve as a captain and surgeon in the Spanish-American War with the 14th Minnesota Infantry. Dr. Dutton ran a practice in downtown Minneapolis until 1935, but he continued to treat patients out of his home almost until the time of his death. Dutton was also well-known as the first doctor in Minneapolis to make house-calls out of an automobile. This case was donated by the wife of Charles E. Dutton of Minneapolis.