Williams Hall, Philadelphia, PA 19104, United States
Mitchell attended the University Grammar School at Fourth and Arch Streets, the descendant of the old Academy of Philadelphia.
College/University
Gallery of Silas Mitchell
Philadelphia, PA 19104, United States
In 1844 Mitchell entered the College Department of the University of Pennsylvania, remaining until illness compelled his withdrawal during his senior year. In 1906, he was granted the degree of bachelor of arts as of the class of 1848.
Gallery of Silas Mitchell
1025 Walnut St #100, Philadelphia, PA 19107, United States
In 1850, Mitchell graduated from the Jefferson Medical College, in which his father was a professor, and then spent a year abroad, studying chiefly with Claude Bernard, the physiologist, and Charles Phillippe Robin, the microscopist.
Career
Gallery of Silas Mitchell
1858
Philadelphia, PA 19104, United States
Silas Weir Mitchell as a young physician and experimental physiologist in 1858. He helped his father with his medical practice but also worked after office hours doing research.
Gallery of Silas Mitchell
1881
Portrait photo of Silas Weir Mitchell.
Gallery of Silas Mitchell
Mitchell is seen examining a patient, most likely at the Infirmary for Nervous Diseases, an adjunct building to the Philadelphia Orthopedic Hospital where in later years his son John Kersley Mitchell also worked. Mitchell cared for many soldiers with military injuries much like those suffered by his fictional protagonist George Dedlow.
Gallery of Silas Mitchell
Portrait of Silas Weir Mitchell.
Gallery of Silas Mitchell
Portrait of Silas Weir Mitchell.
Achievements
Membership
Royal Society
Silas Weir Mitchell was a member of the Royal Society.
American Academy of Arts and Sciences
Silas Weir Mitchell was a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
American Philosophical Society
Silas Weir Mitchell was a member of the American Philosophical Society.
National Academy of Sciences
Silas Weir Mitchell was a member of the National Academy of Sciences.
Silas Weir Mitchell as a young physician and experimental physiologist in 1858. He helped his father with his medical practice but also worked after office hours doing research.
In 1844 Mitchell entered the College Department of the University of Pennsylvania, remaining until illness compelled his withdrawal during his senior year. In 1906, he was granted the degree of bachelor of arts as of the class of 1848.
1025 Walnut St #100, Philadelphia, PA 19107, United States
In 1850, Mitchell graduated from the Jefferson Medical College, in which his father was a professor, and then spent a year abroad, studying chiefly with Claude Bernard, the physiologist, and Charles Phillippe Robin, the microscopist.
Mitchell is seen examining a patient, most likely at the Infirmary for Nervous Diseases, an adjunct building to the Philadelphia Orthopedic Hospital where in later years his son John Kersley Mitchell also worked. Mitchell cared for many soldiers with military injuries much like those suffered by his fictional protagonist George Dedlow.
The Early History of Instrumental Precision in Medicine: An Address Before the Second Congress of American Physicians and Surgeons, September 23rd, 1891
(Silas Weir Mitchell was an American physician and writer ...)
Silas Weir Mitchell was an American physician and writer known for his discovery of causalgia (complex regional pain syndrome) and erythromelalgia. His historical novels, Hugh Wynne, Free Quaker, The Adventures of François, The Youth of Washington and The Red City, take high rank in this branch of fiction.
Silas Weir Mitchell was an American physician and neurologist. In addition, Mitchell wrote novels, short stories, and poetry.
Background
Silas Weir Mitchell was born on February 15, 1829, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States to the family of John Kearsley Mitchell, a professor of medicine at Jefferson Medical College, and Sarah Matilda Henry. He was raised in an eclectic setting stressing versatility in reading literature as well as reciting and occasionally writing poetry, which was his father’s favorite avocation.
Education
Mitchell attended the University Grammar School at Fourth and Arch Streets, the descendant of the old Academy of Philadelphia from which the University of Pennsylvania sprang, and in 1844 entered the College Department of the University, remaining until illness compelled his withdrawal during his senior year. In 1906, he was granted the degree of bachelor of arts as of the class of 1848. In 1850, he graduated from the Jefferson Medical College, in which his father was a professor, and then spent a year abroad, studying chiefly with Claude Bernard, the physiologist, and Charles Phillippe Robin, the microscopist.
Returning in the fall of 1851, Mitchell encountered heavy professional and family responsibility on account of the failing health of his father, whose assistant he became. He had a very positive interest in research and was elected a member of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia in 1853. His first paper, "Observations on the Generation of Uric Acid and Its Crystalline Forms," was published in the American Journal of the Medical Sciences in July 1852. In 1858, he read a paper before the biological section of the Academy of Natural Sciences, entitled "Observations on the Blood Crystals of the Sturgeon," which was published in the Proceedings of that year. This subject interested him through life and ended in the great work on the crystallography of hemoglobin published in 1909 by E. T. Reichert and A. P. Brown, in whose investigations Mitchell had a part. Early in the Civil War he was appointed an acting assistant surgeon in the Union army and improved the opportunity to study nerve wounds and diseases afforded by the Turner's Lane Hospital, Philadelphia. G. R. Moorehouse and W. W. Keen were associated with him in his army work. In collaboration with them, he published two important studies: Gunshot Wounds and Other Injuries of Nerves (1864) and Reflex Paralysis (1864). The former was amplified and reissued in 1872 under the title Injuries of Nerves and Their Consequences.
Mitchell was a very keen clinician and pointed out the seasonal relations of chorea, pre-hemiplegic and post-hemiplegic pains, the disorders of sleep, and the faulty reference of sensations of pain. He was made a professor in the Philadelphia Polyclinic and College for Graduates in Medicine, but the hospital with which his name is most intimately associated is the Philadelphia Orthopaedic Hospital and Infirmary for Nervous Diseases. To this institution, he devoted over forty years of service, and under his influence, it became a center for the treatment of nervous disorders. Here many came to study with him and here he gave most of his instruction.
Mitchell was also a writer. His first creative work was in verse. As early as 1856, he had made a collection of his poems which, upon the advice of Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes, he did not publish, and his initial volume of verse, The Hill of Stones, did not appear until 1882. His most important early poems are to be found in A Psalm of Deaths, and Other Poems (1890); Francis Drake A Tragedy of the Sea (1893), in which he included his vivid dramatic narratives; and The Mother and Other Poems (1893), containing in the title poem one of his most appealing lyrics. In 1896, Collected Poems was published, and in 1901 Selections from the Poems of S. Weir Mitchell was issued in London. The last included his finest effort in verse, "Ode on a Lycian Tomb, " inspired by the death of his only daughter, and written with a restraint and a distinction of phrase which makes it one of the outstanding elegies in American literature. His ability was revealed also in his metrical adaptation of one of the most exquisite of Middle English poems, Pearl (1906), a father's symbolic vision of a little daughter in Paradise.
While he never accepted public office, in a strict sense, he was constantly called upon for advice and help in progressive civic movements in Philadelphia. He preferred to limit his official duties to such semi-public offices as his trusteeship of the University of Pennsylvania, which began in 1875. Here he worked with Provost William Pepper in the development of the school of medicine and the foundation of the department of hygiene. In 1902, upon the foundation of the Franklin Inn, the writers' club of Philadelphia, he became its first president, remaining in office till his death. He met financial loss after the failure of the Real Estate Trust Company, of which he was a director, with the same courage that had animated him in his early days of struggle.
One of Mitchell's important contributions was "Researches upon the Venom of the Rattlesnake," which appeared in Smithsonian Contributions to Knowledge. He was the first to point out that snake venom is a double, not a single, poison. Hideyo Noguchi's great work, done many years later, had its origin in Mitchell's early researches. His work, Injuries of Nerves and Their Consequences, received immediate recognition and wide acclaim. It is an important contribution to the knowledge of the peripheral nerves, both from the point of view of the symptomatology of peripheral nerve injuries and that of the treatment of such injuries. The wide scope of Mitchell's investigations makes it difficult to classify, or, at least, to list, all his contributions. From the end of the Civil War to 1870, he wrote articles on toxicology, peripheral nerve paralyzes, the physiology of the cerebellum, opium, and its effects, and other subjects. From 1870 to 1878, he published thirty-four neurological articles, among them "Influence of Nerve Lesions on the Local Temperature", "On the Spasmodic Diseases of Stumps", and "On a Rare Vaso-motor Neurosis of the Extremities and on the Maladies with Which It May Be Confounded." His description of this rare neurosis, erythromelalgia, is a masterpiece. He was the first to describe it adequately, and it has been named "Weir Mitchell's disease. " In 1874, he called attention to a new clinical entity, post-paralytic chorea. His researches on the physiology of the cerebellum mark him as an experimental investigator of the first rank. They were carried on from 1863 to 1869, but he did not begin publishing his results until April of the latter year.
In 1871, appeared Mitchell's Wear and Tear, a book calling attention to the inability or indisposition of Americans to play, and the increase in nervous disorders that was likely to follow. The book had a wide sale and made a deep impression. It was followed in 1873 and 1875 respectively by two articles on rest in the treatment of the neuralgia of locomotor ataxia, and on rest in the treatment of disease. These were really preparations for his therapeutically important work Fat and Blood, which appeared in 1877. In this volume Mitchell advocated rest, overfeeding, massage, electrotherapy, and physiotherapy in the treatment of functional nervous disorders. These methods were viewed at first with skepticism, but, because of the success which followed Mitchell's use of them, they soon came to be regarded as important aids in treating nervous disorders. The demonstration of their value was one of his most significant contributions to medicine, and they have become known as the "Weir Mitchell Rest Cure." The book went through many editions and was translated into French, German, Italian, and Russian. In 1881, he published a volume entitled Lectures on the Diseases of the Nervous System, Especially in Women, and in 1897, Clinical Lessons on Nervous Diseases, works which contain many original and valuable observations. His "Physiological Studies on the Knee-jerk", in collaboration with Morris Lewis, is still one of the best treatments of this subject. Mitchell's contributions to medical literature covered many different fields. In all, he wrote 119 neurological, and fifty-two pharmacological, physiological, and toxicological papers. Besides those already mentioned these included studies on the nerve supply to the skin, spinal arthropathies, neurotomy, the cremaster reflex, hysteria, tendon and muscle jerks, facial tics, sleep, and sciatica. To the knowledge of many of these subjects, he made original contributions.
Mitchell did not, however, limit himself to medical interests; he became distinguished also in the field of literature. Mitchell's last volume of verse, The Comfort of the Hills, appeared in 1909, and a definitive edition of his poetical works, Complete Poems, in 1914. He began his career as a writer of fiction with "The Case of George Dedlow, " published anonymously in the Atlantic Monthly as the leading article for July 1866. This satire on spiritualism, in which a soldier whose arms and legs have been amputated sees them revived at a seance, was so realistic that contributions were sent to the author under the impression that George Dedlow was a real person. The story is also of great interest because it portrays the real feelings of a soldier upon entering a battle, antedating the work of Stephen Crane by nearly thirty years. After three novelettes, published in one volume in 1880, the first two of which, "Hephzibah Guinness" and "Thee and You," dealt with life in Philadelphia in the early nineteenth century, Mitchell returned to the Civil War period in his first long novels, In War Time (1885), which appeared originally as a serial in the Atlantic Monthly, and Roland Blake (1886). His great historical novel of the Revolution, Hugh Wynne, Free Quaker, first appeared in the Century Magazine and was published separately in 1898.
Standing apart, identifying himself as a “heathen” and demanding the respect of a parson, Mitchell criticized Christian hypocrisy.
Politics
Mitchell was conservative in political matters.
Views
Despite a mutual interest in hysteria and the overlap of some of their methods, Mitchell did not appreciate or respect Freud's contributions. Partially due to Mitchell's Victorian sexual mores and less elaborate theoretical framework, he rejected concepts like childhood sexuality, the Oedipus complex, and the unconscious mind. Mitchell was not given to prolonged, perplexing, and confusing methods of searching for doubtful causes in the sexual incidents of the early childhood or infancy of his patients. Mitchell categorically rejected all sexual implications, rejecting sexual factors as the essential cause of hysterical disturbances. However, while Mitchell did not explicitly discuss sexuality in his public writing and speaking, he did not categorically reject all sexual implications. He chose not to discuss sexuality in public, but he was adept at digging up histories and his patients “told him everything” in private. More to the point, the standard case history form at the Infirmary for Nervous Diseases asked each patient to provide information about “sexual functions” along with “family history,” “habits,” “causes assigned by patient for disease,” and “age at onset.” Clearly, sexuality was considered pertinent to the diagnosis and treatment of nervous disorders at the infirmary. The difference between Freud and Mitchell was more a matter of degree and focus. Still, in contrast to Freud's respect for Mitchell and incorporation of the rest cure into psychoanalysis, Mitchell found Freud's writing disgusting and impatiently dismissed him.
Quotations:
"Medicine is only palliative. For behind disease lies the cause and this cause no drug can reach."
"There are those who suffer and grow strong; there are those who suffer and grow weak. This mystery of pain is still for me the saddest of earth's disabilities."
"The first thing to be done by a biographer in estimating character is to examine the stubs of his victim's cheque-books."
Membership
Silas Weir Mitchell was a member of the Royal Society, the American Philosophical Society, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the National Academy of Sciences.
Royal Society
,
United Kingdom
American Academy of Arts and Sciences
,
United States
American Philosophical Society
,
United States
National Academy of Sciences
,
United States
Personality
Mitchell was a fine combination of the practitioner and investigator in medicine. Many of his original investigations were made in clinical subjects, but his studies of snake venom and of the functions of the cerebellum indicate that he was also a laboratory student of the first rank. He was never satisfied unless he was engaged in research of some sort.
Liberal, tolerant, with a readiness to help younger men and accord them full credit for their achievement, a patrician to the fingertips, Mitchell wore his many honors with the ease of those to whom great achievement brings no change of character.
Mitchell was a superb conversationalist and his personality and humor gave him a wide range of friends. He actively promoted young people who he thought were outstanding, most notably John Shaw Billings and Hydeio Noguchi.
Mitchell was famous for his sometimes eccentric approach to patients with functional illnesses. He was asked to see a patient who was thought to be dying and soon sent all the attendants and assistants from the room, emerging a little later. Asked whether she had any chance of recovery, he said «Yes she will be coming out in a few minutes, I have set her sheets on fire. A clear-cut case of hysteria!»
Another story is that he was confronted with a lady who had a similar problem and having tried all the tricks he knew to induce her to leave her bed, threatened her with rape and commenced to undress. He got to his undergarments when the woman fled the room screaming! These stories may have grown with the years since in many ways he was rather prim, and Freud’s writing shocked him. He is said to have thrown a book on psychoanalysis into his fire, exclaiming, «Where did this filthy thing come from?»
Physical Characteristics:
Weir Mitchell was a legendary character whose portraits show him as a handsome man. His rather gaunt features and bearded face make one readily understand why he was likened by many people at the time to «Uncle Sam.»
Interests
Artists
Thomas Eakins, Augustus Saint-Gaudens, John Singer Sargent
Connections
In 1858, Mitchell married Mary Middleton Elwyn, daughter of Alfred Langdon Elwyn of Philadelphia, who died in 1862 leaving two sons, John Kearsley, who became associated with his father in his profession, and Langdon Elwyn, playwright, and poet. In 1875, Mitchell married Mary Cadwalader, daughter of General Thomas Cadwalader of Philadelphia. They had a daughter Marie Gouverneur Mitchell.