S(ilas) Weir Mitchell Biography

Dictionary of Literary Biography on S(ilas) Weir Mitchell

Although now largely forgotten, S. Weir Mitchell was once a celebrity: a prominent Philadelphia physician, America's foremost neurologist, and a best-selling author. Mitchell's controversial "rest cure" for neurasthenia was administered to such literary figures as Edith Wharton, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, and Virginia Woolf, and he is remembered for his pioneering work on the biochemistry of snake toxins, the phenomenon of "phantom limbs" in amputees, and the causes and treatment of neuralgia and neurasthenia. Mitchell published several medical textbooks and hundreds of scientific papers and also pursued a successful literary career.

Mitchell's most famous novel was Hugh Wynne: Free Quaker, Sometime Brevet Lieutenant-Colonel on the Staff of His Excellency General Washington (1897), an historical romance of the American Revolution that sold more than half a million copies. His literary production was prodigious as he wrote twelve more novels, eight volumes of poetry, and dozens of short stories and novellas. His best novels, though not of the first rank, are readable and entertaining, offering serious and wide-ranging commentary on social issues and presenting some memorable characters animated by his clinical understanding of mental illness.

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