“A story is told of his readiness in the lecture-room.  A mother brought into the amphitheater, one morning, an extremely dirty, sickly, miserable-looking child, for the purpose of having a tumor removed.  He exhibited the tumor to the class, but informed the mother that he could not operate upon the child without the consent of her husband.  One of the students, in his eagerness to examine the tumor, jumped over into the little inclosure designed for the operator and his patients.  Dr. Mott, observing this intrusion, turned to the student and asked him, with the most innocent expression of countenance:  ’Are you the father of this child?’ Thunders of applause and laughter greeted this ingenious rebuke, during which the intruder returned to his place crestfallen.”

He was equally as successful in his private practice as in his labors in the medical school.  His brilliant reputation preceded him in his return to his native country, and immediately upon opening his office in New York he entered upon a large and lucrative practice.  His skill as a surgeon was in constant demand, and it is said that during his long career he tied the common carotid artery forty-six times, cut for stone one hundred and sixty-five times, and amputated nearly one thousand limbs.  His old preceptor, Sir Astley Cooper, proud of the distinction won by his favorite pupil, said of him exultingly:  “He has performed more of the great operations than any man living, or that ever did live.”

When he was but thirty-three years old (in 1818) he placed a ligature around the bracheo-cephalic trunk or arteria innominata, within two inches of the heart, for aneurism of the right subclavian artery.  This was the first time this wonderful operation had ever been performed, and the skill and success with which he accomplished it stamped him as one of the brightest lights of his profession.  “The patient survived the operation twenty-eight days, and thus demonstrated the feasibility of this hazardous and thus far unparalleled undertaking.  He discovered in this case that, though all supply of blood to the blood-vessels of the right arm was apparently cut off, the circulation was kept up by the interosculating blood-vessels, the pulsation at the wrist maintained, and no evidence of loss of vitality or warmth manifested in the limb.  The patient finally died from secondary hemorrhage.”

In 1828 he performed successfully the most difficult and dangerous operation known to surgery.  A clergyman called upon him to remove an enormous tumor in the neck, in which were imbedded and twisted many of the great arteries.  In this operation it became necessary to take out entire the right clavicle or collar bone, to lay bare the membrane which surrounds the lungs, to search for and dissect around the arteries which ran through the tumor, to make forty ligatures, and to remove an immense mass of diseased matter.  This terrible operation had never been attempted before, and was performed by Dr. Mott without the aid of chloroform; yet it was done so skillfully that the patient survived it, and in 1865 was still living and discharging his ministerial duties.  It was thirty years before it was attempted again in any part of the world.  It was a great triumph of the genius of the operator, and won him praises from men of science in all countries.