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Silas Weir Mitchell Biography & Facts

Silas Weir Mitchell (February 15, 1829 – January 4, 1914) was an American physician, scientist, novelist, and poet. He is considered the father of medical neurology, and he discovered causalgia (complex regional pain syndrome) and erythromelalgia, and pioneered the rest cure. Early life Silas Weir Mitchell was born on February 15, 1829, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, to prominent physician and writer John Kearsley Mitchell (1792–1858) and Sarah Henry Mitchell (1800–1872) . He studied at Philadelphia's renowned University of Pennsylvania and later earned the degree of MD at the city's Jefferson Medical College in 1850. Career During the Civil War, he was director of treatment of nervous injuries and maladies at Turner's Lane Hospital, Philadelphia, and at the close of the war became a specialist in neurology. In this field Mitchell pioneered the rest cure for diseases now termed "psychiatric", particularly neurasthenia and hysteria, subsequently taken up by the medical world. The treatment consisted primarily in isolation, confinement to bed, dieting, electrotherapy and massage; and was popularly known as 'Dr Diet and Dr Quiet'. Mitchell advocated a high-fat diet to his patients. He believed that a diet rich in fat would "fatten and redden" his patients, leading to a cure. To achieve this, large quantities of milk were prescribed. He requested his patients to consume two quarts or more milk a day. 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. Mitchell discovered and treated causalgia (today known as CRPS/RSD), a condition most often encountered by hand surgeons. Mitchell is considered the father of medical neurology and a pioneer of "evidence-based" or "scientific" medicine. He was a founding member of the American Anthropometric Society whose purpose was to collect the brains of eminent scientists to further brain science. He was also a psychiatrist, toxicologist, author, poet, and celebrity in Europe as well as America. His contemporaries considered him a genius no less than Benjamin Franklin. In 1866, he published a short story in the Atlantic Monthly resting upon both somatic and psychological insights entitled "The Case of George Dedlow". From that point onward, Mitchell divided his attention between scientific and literary pursuits. In the former field, he produced monographs on rattlesnake venom, intellectual hygiene, injuries to the nerves, neurasthenia, nervous diseases of women, the effects of gunshot wounds upon the nervous system, and relations between nurse, physician, and patient; in the latter, he wrote juvenile stories, several volumes of respectable verse (The Hill of Stones and Other Poems was published in 1883 by Houghton, Mifflin and Co.), and prose fiction of varying merit, which earned him a leading place among American authors at the close of the 19th century. His historical novels in particular, notably Hugh Wynne (1897), The Adventures of François (1898), The Youth of Washington (1904), and The Red City (1909), are among the best of their genre. Prominent patients Although Silas Weir Mitchell was considered the most prominent doctor of the time, his female patients often suffered under his care. There was even a death due to his treatment that was not revealed to the public. 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 this treatment. His treatment was also used on Virginia Woolf, who wrote a savage satire of it in her novel Mrs. Dalloway (1925): "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". Influence on Freud Sigmund Freud reviewed Mitchell's book on The Treatment of Certain Forms of Neurasthenia and Hysteria in 1887; and used electrotherapy in his work into the 1890s. Freud also adopted Mitchell's use of physical relaxation as an adjunct to therapy, which arguably led to the institutionalization of the psychoanalytic couch. Honors and recognition 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. He was a trustee of the Carnegie Institution from 1902 until he died in 1914. In 1912 he was honored by the Guggenheim Honor Cup of the Penn Club of New York. The American Academy of Neurology award for young researchers, the S. Weir Mitchell Award, is named for him. Crotalus mitchellii, the speckled rattlesnake, was named after Mitchell. Personal life Mitchell was twice married. His first marriage was to Mary Middleton Elwyn (1838–1862), a daughter of Dr. Alfred L. Elwyn of Philadelphia. Before her death, they were the parents of two children: John Kearsley Mitchell (1859–1917), a neurologist who married Anne Keppele Williams in 1890. Langdon Elwyn Mitchell (1862–1935), a playwright who married actress Marion Lea in 1891. On June 23, 1875, Mitchell was married to Mary Cadwalader (1835–1914), who was from one of Philadelphia's most prestigious families. She was a daughter of Thomas McCall Cadwalader and Maria Charlotte Gouverneur (niece of Elizabeth Kortright, who had married U.S. President James Monroe). The marriage "propelled him to one of the city's highest social circles and he became a trustee of the University of Pennsylvania the following year." Together, they were the parents of a daughter: Marie Gouverneur Cadwalader Mitchell (1876–1898), who died unmarried. Mitchell died on January 4, 1914, in Philadelphia and is interred at The Woodlands Cemetery. His widow died a week after his funeral. Cultural Club Founder Mitchell and 8 other members of the University Club at Penn founded The Franklin Inn Club in 1902. Art patron He was a friend and patron of the artist Thomas Eakins, and owned the painting Whistling for Plover. The Philadelphia Chippendale chairs seen in several Eakins paintings – such as William Rush Carving his Allegorical Figure of Schuylkill River (1877) and the bas-relief Knitting (1883) – were borrowed from Mitchell. Following Eakins's 1886 forced resignation from the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Mitchell may have recommended the artist's trip to the Badlands of South Dakota. 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.... Discover the Silas Weir Mitchell popular books. Find the top 100 most popular Silas Weir Mitchell books.