Silas Weir Mitchell

Silas Weir Mitchell Poems

Silas Weir Mitchell Biography

Silas Weir Mitchell (February 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. Thenceforward, 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. He was a friend and patron of the artist Thomas Eakins. Following Eakins's 1886 firing from the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, he may have suggested the artist's trip to the Badlands of North Dakota . The Philadelphia Chippendale chair seen in several Eakins paintings—such as William Rush Carving his Allegorical Figure of Schuylkill River (1877) and the bas-relief Knitting (1883) -- was owned by Mitchell. 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 External Links, below). In memory of his daughter Maria, Mitchell commissioned a monument from the sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens, The Angel of Purity (a white marble version of Amor Caritas), now in the Philadelphia Museum of Art.. In addition to commissioning August Saint-Gaudens works, he was commemorated in two identical brass reliefs sculpted by Saint-Gaudens himself. Dr. 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. New International Encyclopedia)

The Best Poem Of Silas Weir Mitchell

My Castles In Spain

Ho, joyous friend with beard of brown!
A half-hour back 't was gray;
A half-hour back you wore a frown,
But now the world looks gay.
For here the mirror's courtly grace
Cheats you with a youthful face,
And here the poet clock of time
Each happy minute counts in rhyme;
And here the roses never die,
And 'Yes' is here Love's sole reply.
Gladder land can no man gain
Than my mystic realm of Spain.
Come with me, for I am one
Hidalgo-born of Aragon;
I will show you why I choose
Thus to live in Andalouse.
Across the terrace, up the stair,
Our steps shall wander to and fro
Where pensive stand the statues fair,
And murmur songs of long ago.
Or will you see my pictures old,
The landscapes hung for my delight
In window-frames of fretted gold,
Where, glowing, shines in color bright
That Claude of mine at full of noon,
When the ripe, eager blood of June
Stirs bird and leaf, and everywhere
The world is one gay love-affair?
Or shall we linger, looking west,
Just when my Turner 's at its best,
To watch the cold stars, one by one,
Crawl to the embers of the sun,
Whilst all the gray sierra snows
Are ruddy with the twilight rose?
Believe me, artists there are none
Like those of mine in Aragon;
Nor painter would I care to choose
Beside the sun of Andalouse.
Or shall we part the shining leaves
Down drooping from the vine-clad eaves,
And see, amidst the sombre pines,
The maiden take a shameless kiss?
Around his neck her white arm twines,
And still is sweet their changeless bliss.
I know she cannot aught refuse,
For that 's the law in Andalouse,
And ever 'neath this happy sun
There is no sin in Aragon.
Or shall we cast yon casement wide,
And see the knights before us ride,
The charging Cid, the Moors that flee?
Grim although the battles be
That through my window-frames I see,
No death is there, nor any pain,
Because on my estates in Spain
All passions gaily run their course
But lack the shadow-fiend remorse.
Something 't is to make one vain
Thus to be grandee of Spain;
For the wine of Andalouse
All the world a man might lose,
Could he see what rosy shapes
Trample out my Spanish grapes,
Know how pink the feet that bruise
My gold-green grapes of Andalouse.
Ah, but if you 're not a don,
Drink no wine of Aragon.
Dreamland loves and elfin flavors,
Gay romances, fairy favors,
Moonlit mists and glad confusions,
Youth's brief mystery of delusions,
Racing, chasing, haunt the brain
Of him who drinks this wine of Spain.
Where the quarterings were won
That make of me a Spanish don
No one asks in Aragon.
Never blood of Bourbon grew
So magnificently blue;
Blood have I that once was Dante's;
Kinsman am I of Cervantes.
Come and see what nobles fine
Make my proud ancestral line:
In my gallery set apart,
Lo where art interprets art.
Yes, you needs must like it well,—
Shakespeare's face by Raphael.
Ah, 't is very nobly done,
But that's the air of Aragon.
He left me that which till life ends
Is surely mine,—the best of friends;
And chiefly one, if you would know,
I love of all, Mercutio.
Velasquez? Ay, he knew a man,
And well he drew my Puritan,
With eyes too full of heaven's light
To dream our day as aught but night.
If my soul stirs swift at wrong,
This sire made that instinct strong.
Da Vinci touched with love the face
That keeps for me young Surrey's grace.
And that,—ah, that is one to like,
My kinsman Sidney, by Vandyke.
Some words he gave, of which bereft
My life were poorer. There, to left
Are they whose rills of English song
Unto my royal blood belong.
For poet, painter, priest, and lay
Went to make my Spanish clay;
And here away in Andalouse,
Whatever mood my soul may choose,
The poet's joy, the soldier's force,
Finds for me its parent source
Where, along the pictured wall,
Hero voices on me call,
With the falling of the dews,
In Aragon or Andalouse,
When the mystic shadows troop,
When my fairy flowers droop,
And the joyous day is done!
In Andalouse or Aragon.
;;;;
The Quaker Lady
'MID drab and gray of moldered leaves,
The spoil of last October,
I see the Quaker lady stand
In dainty garb and sober.

No speech has she for praise or prayer,.
No blushes, as I claim
To know what gentle whisper gave
Her prettiness a name.

The wizard stillness of the hour
My fancy aids: again
Return the days of hoop and hood
And tranquil William Penn.

I see a maid amid the wood
Demurely calm and meek,
Or troubled by the mob of curls
That riots on her cheek.

Her eyes are blue, her cheeks are red,—
Gay colors for a Friend,—
And Nature with her mocking rouge
Stands by a blush to lend.

The gown that holds her rosy grace
Is truly of the oddest;
And wildly leaps her tender heart
Beneath the kerchief modest.

It must have been the poet Love
Who, while she slyly listened,
Divined the maiden in the flower,
And thus her semblance christened.

Was he a proper Quaker lad
In suit of simple gray?
What fortune had his venturous speech,
And was it 'yea' or 'nay'?

And if indeed she murmured 'yea,'
And throbbed with worldly bliss,
I wonder if in such a case
Do Quakers really kiss?

Or was it some love-wildered beau
Of old colonial days,
With clouded cane and broidered coat,
And very artful ways?

And did he whisper through her curls
Some wicked, pleasant vow,
And swear no courtly dame had words
As sweet as 'thee' and 'thou'?

Or did he praise her dimpled chin
In eager song or sonnet,
And find a merry way to cheat
Her kiss-defying bonnet?

And sang he then in verses gay,
Amid this forest shady,
The dainty flower at her feet
Was like his Quaker lady?

And did she pine in English fogs,
Or was his love enough?
And did she learn to sport the fan,
And use the patch and puff?

Alas! perhaps she played quadrille,
And, naughty grown and older,
Was pleased to show a dainty neck
Above a snowy shoulder.

But sometimes in the spring, I think,
She saw, as in a dream,
The meeting-house, the home sedate,
The Schuylkill's quiet stream;

And sometimes in the minuet's pause
Her heart went wide afield
To where, amid the woods of May,
A blush its love revealed.

Till far away from court and king
And powder and brocade,
The Quaker ladies at her feet
Their quaint obeisance made.

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