- This article is about the physician/writer. For the actor, see Silas Weir Mitchell (actor).
Silas Weir Mitchell (January 15, 1829–January 4, 1914) was an American physician and writer.
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 hysteria; the treatment consisting primarily in isolation, confinement
to bed, dieting and massage. His medical texts include
Injuries of Nerves and Their Consequences (1872) and Fat and Blood (1877). Mitchell's disease (erythromelalgia) is named after him.
In 1863 he wrote a clever short story, combining physiological and psychological problems, entitled The Case of George
Dedlow, in the Atlantic Monthly Magazine. Thenceforward Dr Weir Mitchell, as a
writer, divided his attention between professional and literary pursuits. In the former field he produced monographs on
rattlesnake poison, 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 also 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.
External links
Source
This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia
Britannica Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public
domain.
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