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Albert Graeme Mitchell was born on February 21, 1889, in Salem, Massachusetts. He was the only child of Fred Albert and Maria (Graham) Mitchell. His father, a bookkeeper, was a native of Maine; his mother, of Ireland. During the boy's early childhood the family moved to Philadelphia.
Mitchell attended the local public schools and after graduating from Central High School entered the medical school of the University of Pennsylvania, receiving the M. D. degree in 1910.
After two years of internship and residency in the Presbyterian Hospital and the Babies Hospital of Philadelphia, Mitchell accompanied a prominent Philadelphian and his family on a long tour of Europe and the Near East, spent a few months in graduate study at the Harvard Medical School, and then opened a private practice in pediatrics in Philadelphia. When the United States became involved in World War I, he enlisted in the Army Medical Corps and saw active service in France. After leaving the army in 1919, Mitchell resumed private practice in Philadelphia. He was also an instructor at the University of Pennsylvania, in the department of pediatrics at the Children's Hospital. Mitchell had never been satisfied with his role as a private practitioner and part-time teacher. He therefore gladly accepted an invitation in 1924 to succeed Kenneth D. Blackfan as Rachford Professor and head of the department of pediatrics at the University of Cincinnati. The concept was then just beginning to emerge that teachers of clinical subjects should devote full time to their courses, and the appointment gave Mitchell a unique opportunity.
Mitchell served on the editorial board of the American Journal of Diseases of Children and was pediatric editor of the Cyclopedia of Medicine. Alone or with collaborators he wrote more than 150 papers, and with Echo K. Upham and Elgie M. Wallinger, he published Pediatrics and Pediatric Nursing (1939). His most important contribution to the literature was his part in preparing the second edition of The Diseases of Infants and Children, the first edition of which (1919) had been written by J. P. Crozer Griffith, a former colleague at the University of Pennsylvania. Though subsequent revisions, including single-volume editions in 1933, 1937, and 1941 under the title Textbook of Pediatrics, were largely the work of Mitchell, the text continued to bear the names of both authors. He died at the Children's Hospital in Cincinnati of coronary disease at the age of fifty-two and was buried in Arlington Cemetery, Drexel Hill, Pennsylvania.
With the strong support of William Cooper Proctor, then president of the board of trustees of the Children's Hospital in Cincinnati, Mitchell was able to develop a pediatric unit that by the time of his death had become preeminent. Mitchell was responsible for the development and guidance of the Children's Hospital Research Foundation, but he himself was mainly interested in clinical problems, in teaching, and in the coordination of community health services for children. He instituted strict measures to control the spread of infection among patients in the hospital wards. His organization of the pediatric services in the Cincinnati area stands as a model for unified community health facilities established within a teaching and research framework. In addition to the centralized ambulatory and inpatient services in the contiguous units of the Children's Hospital, the General Hospital, and the Contagious Disease Hospital, this organization included district clinics distributed throughout the poorer sections of the city, the Children's Convalescent Home, and the hospital of the Ohio Soldiers' and Sailors' Orphans' Home at Xenia, Ohio. Each of these units provided material for research and for the training of pediatric interns and residents. Apart from these departmental duties, Mitchell took an active role in local, state, and national medical affairs. He was a member of the Cincinnati Board of Health (1926 - 30), a consultant to the Ohio State Board of Health, a participant in the 1929 and 1940 White House conferences on children, and a principal consultant of the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis. He was the first pediatrician to be appointed to the National Board of Medical Examiners and was thus able to exert wide influence on pediatric education.
Mitchell was an Episcopalian.
Mitchell was a Republican.
Mitchell liked people, and his ability to instill confidence in others made him a leader in pediatric affairs. Perhaps Mitchell's most important contribution was the stimulus he gave to his students, residents, and colleagues, who later regarded his years in the department as a "golden era. "
Mitchell's interests were not confined to his specialty. An amateur artist, he displayed marked craftsmanship in watercolors, etchings, and dry-point engravings. He made a notable collection of medical caricatures, drawings, and colored lithographs by such artists as Rowlandson, Daumier, and Hogarth. He was also a noted raconteur and wrote occasional essays in humorous or philosophic vein under the pseudonym "Dr. Pottlesmith. "
On October 2, 1920, Mitchell married Adele Florence Wentz, daughter of a Philadelphia physician. They had twin daughters, Marie Graeme and Kathryn Wentz.
