S. Weir Mitchell, 1829–1914: Philadelphia’s Literary Physician by Nancy Cervetti (review)

Since his death in 1914, Silas Weir Mitchell has continued to inspire a new biography every decade or so. Each strives to correct the elisions of the previous and to capture Mitchell’s several, diverse talents. The newest addition by Nancy Cervetti helpfully collects the many Mitchells otherwise dispersed across previous biographies by Beverley R. Tucker (1914), Anna Robeson Burr (1929), Ernest Earnest (1950), David M. Rein (1952), Richard D. Walter (1970), and Joseph P. Lovering (1971). In Cervetti’s definitive account of Mitchell’s life, she establishes his centrality to a scholarly understanding of nineteenth- and early twentieth-century medical research and education in the United States—and American culture more broadly.

The Mitchell that herein coalesces is a man of influence. On the one hand, he was a renowned international medical researcher, specializing in poisons and nervous disorders, whose work on the latter was admired by Jean-Martin Charcot and Sigmund Freud. He was considered, by some, an accomplished author, and Hugh Wynne (1896), his most popular novel, sold over five hundred thousand copies in the first ten years after publication. He claimed as confidants Episcopal bishop Phillips Brooks, medical luminary Sir William Osler, and fellow literary physician Oliver Wendell Holmes and was the patron of Walt Whitman. On the other hand, his work on poisons attracted the vitriol of anti-vivisectionists, who vilified Mitchell for killing countless animals in decades of research. His idealization of women as docile and domesticated raised the ire of many. For example, physician Mary Putnam Jacobi advocated, contra Mitchell, for women’s right to attend medical school. In her short story “The Yellow Wallpaper,” author Charlotte Perkins Gilman—Mitchell’s former patient and beneficiary of his ground-breaking rest cure for nervous ailments—used him as a convenient symbol of a patriarchal system she sought to reject. In contrast to previous biographies, then, Cervetti’s account gives us the complete Weir Mitchell, with all of his triumphs and flaws.

This reintroduction to Philadelphia’s literary physician, too, both satisfies and occasionally disappoints. Much to Cervetti’s credit, she corrects inaccuracies that began with the Burr biography, which she rightly points out “is a hagiographic account marred by omissions, substantial and unacknowledged editing, and no documentation” (5). An impressive amount of research went into creating a reliable and thorough biography that successfully extinguishes a trend of misinformation begun with Burr. Cervetti conducted an extensive investigation into primary documents, including Mitchell’s unpublished autobiography, correspondence, scientific literature, prose, and poetry. As a result, Mitchell scholars now have a clear picture of the interests, habits of mind, and principles of a man who significantly shaped how scientific research was conducted during the nineteenth century; how women were perceived, medically, and socioeconomically; and how tasteful literature was defined. Narrating from his boyhood and education to professional accomplishments as a writer and a doctor to family life, the Cervetti biography does what no other previous account achieves: it introduces us to a complex human being who affected American society as much with his literature and misogyny as he did with his physiological expertise.

The book’s prose style and lively characterization of Mitchell, however, is undermined by its poor transitioning and absent narrative structure. In an attempt, perhaps, to make up for Burr’s abuse of editorial prerogatives, the volume evinces an episodic style, emphasizing minutiae while simultaneously poorly contextualizing it. For example, readers will encounter excessive instances of familial discontents (such as his sister Elizabeth’s unhappy stay in England while Mitchell studied in Paris) and unanalyzed synopses of books he either wrote or read. (The plot summary of Hugh Wynne alone takes up more than three pages.) While the effort to avoid the failures of a Burr-esque grand narrative is admirable, the experience of reading about the many Mitchells requires patience. Readers will often have to wait to discover—or surmise...