Silas Weir Mitchell

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This article is about the physician/writer. For the actor, see Silas Weir Mitchell (actor).
Silas Weir Mitchell

Silas Weir Mitchell (February 15, 1829 – January 4, 1914) was an American physician and writer known for his discovery of causalgia.

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Biography [edit]

He was son of a physician, John Kearsley Mitchell (1798–1858), and was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

He studied at the University of Pennsylvania in that city, and received the degree of M.D. at Jefferson Medical College in 1850. During the Civil War he had charge of nervous injuries and maladies at Turners Lane Hospital, Philadelphia, and at the close of the war became a specialist in neurology. In this field Weir Mitchell's name became prominently associated with his introduction of the rest cure, subsequently taken up by the medical world, for nervous diseases, particularly neurasthenia and hysteria.[1] The treatment consisted primarily in isolation, confinement to bed, dieting, electrotherapy and massage; and was popularly know as 'Dr Diet and Dr Quiet'.[2] His medical texts include Injuries of Nerves and Their Consequences (1872) and Fat and Blood (1877). Mitchell's disease (erythromelalgia) is named after him. He also coined the term Phantom Limb during his study of an amputee.[3]

In 1863 he wrote a clever short story, combining physiological and psychological problems, entitled "The Case of George Dedlow", in the Atlantic Monthly. Thenceforward, Mitchell, as a writer, divided his attention between professional and literary pursuits. In the former field, he produced monographs on rattlesnake venom, on intellectual hygiene, on injuries to the nerves, on neurasthenia, on nervous diseases of women, on the effects of gunshot wounds upon the nervous system, and on the relations between nurse, physician, and patient; while in the latter, he wrote juvenile stories, several volumes of respectable verse, and prose fiction of varying merit, which, however, gave him a leading place among the American authors of the close of the 19th century. His historical novels, Hugh Wynne, Free Quaker (1897), The Adventures of François (1898) and The Red City (1909), take high rank in this branch of fiction.

He was Charlotte Perkins Gilman's doctor and his use of a rest cure on her provided the idea for "The Yellow Wallpaper", a short story in which the narrator is driven insane by her rest cure.

His treatment was also used on Virginia Woolf, who wrote a savage satire of it: "you invoke proportion; order rest in bed; rest in solitude; silence and rest; rest without friends, without books, without messages; six months rest; until a man who went in weighing seven stone six comes out weighing twelve".[4]

Influence on Freud [edit]

Sigmund Freud reviewed Mitchell's book on The Treatment of Certain Forms of Neurasthenia and Hysteria in 1887;[5] and used electrotherapy in his wake into the 1890s.[6]

Freud also adopted Mitchell's use of physical relaxation as an adjunct to therapy, which arguably resulted eventually in the employment of the psychoanalytic couch.[7]

Art patron [edit]

Princeton University
Seventy Year Ago (Aunt Sallie in Dr. M.'s Chair) (1877) by Thomas Eakins.

He was a friend and patron of the artist Thomas Eakins. Following Eakins's 1886 firing from the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, he may have suggested the artist's trip to the Badlands of North Dakota. The Philadelphia Chippendale chair seen in several Eakins paintings—such as William Rush Carving his Allegorical Figure of Schuylkill River (1877) and the bas-relief Knitting (1883) -- was owned by Mitchell.

The artist John Singer Sargent painted two portraits of Mitchell, one is in the collection of the College of Physicians of Philadelphia, the other, commissioned by the Mutual Assurance Company of Philadelphia in 1902, was recently sold (see External Links, below).

In memory of his daughter Maria, Mitchell commissioned a monument from the sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens, The Angel of Purity (a white marble version of Amor Caritas), now in the Philadelphia Museum of Art.[8] In addition to commissioning August Saint-Gaudens works, he was commemorated in two identical brass reliefs sculpted by Saint-Gaudens himself.

Honors and recognition [edit]

Dr. Mitchell's eminence in science and letters was recognized by honorary degrees conferred upon him by several universities at home and abroad and by membership, honorary or active, in many American and foreign learned societies. In 1887 he was president of the Association of American Physicians and in 1908–09 president of the American Neurological Association.

The American Academy of Neurology award for young researchers is named for Dr. Mitchell.[9]

The Speckled Rattlesnake Crotalus mitchellii was named after Dr. Mitchell.[10]

Terms [edit]

  • Weir Mitchell skin — a red, glossy, perspiring skin seen in cases of incomplete irritative lesion of a nerve.
  • Weir Mitchell treatment — a method of treating neurasthenia, hysteria, etc., by absolute rest in bed, frequent and abundant feeding, and the systematic use of massage and electricity.
  • Mitchell's disease — erythromelalgia.
Dorland's Medical Dictionary (1938)

Publications [edit]

  • Mitchell, S. Weir and Edward T. Reichert. 1886. Researches upon the Venoms of Poisonous Serpents. Smithsonian Contributions to Knowledge, Number 647. The Smithsonian Institution. Washington, District of Columbia. 179 pp.
  • 'Circumstance' By S. Weir Mitchell, MD. LL.D. Harvard and Edinburgh. Copyright, 1901, By The Century Co. Published, 1902, By The Century Co.
  • "Rest in the Treatment of Nervous Disease" by S. Weir Mitchell

References [edit]

  1. ^ Henri Ellenberger, The Discovery of the Unconscious (1970) p. 244
  2. ^ Ellenberger, p. 244
  3. ^ Neurology .2006: 66(8):1241-1244 Silas Weir Mitchell discovered and treated causalgia (today known as CRPS/RSD), a condition most often encountered by hand surgeons. He is considered the father of neurology as well as an early pioneer in scientific medicine. He was also a psychiatrist, toxicologist, author, poet, and a celebrity in America and Europe. His many skills and interests led his contemporaries to consider him a genius on par with Benjamin Franklin. His contributions to medicine and particularly hand surgery continue to resonate today.
  4. ^ Quoted in Hermione Lee, Virginia Woolf (1996) p. 194
  5. ^ Ernest Jones, The Life and Work of Sigmund Freud (1964) p. 210
  6. ^ Peter Gay, Freud: A Life for our Time (1988) p. 62
  7. ^ Ellenberger, p. 518
  8. ^ Angel of Purity at Philadelphia Museum of Art
  9. ^ American Academy of Neurology: S. Weir Mitchell award
  10. ^ http://www.reptilesofaz.org/Snakes-Subpages/h-c-mitchellii.html
Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Silas Weir Mitchell

Further reading [edit]

  • A. Proust/G. Ballet, The Treatment of Neurasthenia (1902)
  • A Catalogue of the Scientific and Literary Work of S. Weir Mitchell (Philadelphia, 1894)
  • Talcott Williams, " Dr. S. Weir Mitchell'" in the Century Magazine, volume lvii, (New York, 1898)
  • Talcott Williams, in several articles in the Book News Monthly, volume xxvi, (Philadelphia, 1907)
  • E. P. Oberholtzer, "Personal Memories of Weir Mitchell," in the Bookman, volume xxxix (New York, 1914)
  • B. R. Tucker, S. Weir Mitchell (Boston, 1914)

External links [edit]

Source [edit]

Public Domain This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. 

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