Overview Silas Weir Mitchell was born in Philadelphia in 1829. He earned his M.D. from Jefferson Medical College in 1850. During the American Civil War (1861-1865), Mitchell worked as a contract surgeon in Turner's Lane Hospital in Philadelphia, an army hospital for nervous diseases. was actively involved in numerous local and national medical societies. He was founder and first president of the American Neurological Society and first president of the Philadelphia Neurological Society. In later...

Scope and Contents note The S. Weir Mitchell Papers, spanning 1788 to 1949, contain Mitchell's correspondence, travel journals, diaries, literary notebooks, and manuscripts of his speeches, poems, and unpublished autobiography. The bulk of the collection concerns Mitchell's family life and literary career, but also present is material pertaining to Mitchell as a physician, such as correspondence with his British and American colleagues and records of his studies of patients with nerve injuries. The collection also...