[Silas Weir Mitchell] typescript on François Villon

Collection

Identifier: MSS 2/241-01

Scope and Contents

Typescript address before unknown audience with contemporary and later holograph emendations, attributed to S. Weir Mitchell, circa 1897. Mitchell describes life of poet François Villon. Includes remarks on Edmond Rostand’s Cyrano de Bergerac.

Dates

circa 1897

Creator

Mitchell, Silas Weir (Person)

Biographical / Historical

Silas Weir Mitchell, Philadelphia neurologist, novelist, and poet, was born on 15 Feb. 1829. He was a son of physician John Kearsley Mitchell. Mitchell married Mary Middleton Elwyn (d. 1862), in 1856, then Mary Cadwalader, in 1875. He had two sons from his first marriage and a daughter from his second. S. Weir Mitchell died of pneumonia on 4 Jan. 1914. Mitchell received an M.D. from Jefferson Medical College in 1850. He then studied in Paris with Claude Bernard. During the Civil War, he was an assistant surgeon and studied gunshot wounds. Mitchell was a pioneer in the development of the rest cure to treat nervous disorders, toxicology, physiology of the cerebellum, and opium research, and was closely associated with the Philadelphia Orthopaedic Hospital and Infirmary for Nervous Diseases. He was elected to fellowship in the College of Physicians of Philadelphia in 1856 and twice held the office of president.