S. Weir Mitchell, 1829–1914: Philadelphia's Literary Physician

Acknowledgments

I am grateful to many people for their help and support during my years of research and writing about S.Weir Mitchell. My first thanks must go to Susan B. Case, former director of the Clendening History of Medicine Library in Kansas City. In 1994 she told me about a new collection of S. Weir Mitchell papers at the College of Physicians of Philadelphia and encouraged me to apply for a fellowship.Subsequent fellowships and travel grants from the Francis Clark Wood Institute for the History of Medicine at the College of Physicians have supported several summers of work in Philadelphia. I am most grateful for the support of the entire college staff, including Annie Brogan, Robert Hicks, Evi Numen, and Sofie Sereda. I particularly wish to thank Charles B. Greifenstein, now associate librarian and manuscripts librarian at the American Philosophical Society, for his willingness to answer my questions over the years and for his enthusiasm for Mitchell. I am grateful for a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, which supported a year of extensive travel to gather and transcribe Mitchell’s letters at numerous other archives. I am grateful to Professor Nancy Cott and the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study for the opportunity to attend a seminar on “Writing Past Lives: Biography as History” that focused on gender and biography. I thank my home institution, Avila University, for two yearlong sabbaticals.Special thanks also go to my Avila colleague Professor Robert Powell, herpetologist and field biologist, for his help with venomous snakes and German translations. I am deeply indebted to Dr.David and Mrs.Rose Hausman for their kindness and hospitality in Philadelphia. The friendship and guidance of Professor Bernice Hausman at Virginia Tech has made this book possible.I also wish to thank Gregory Eiselein, professor of English at Kansas State University, and Marcia Meldrum, codirector of the Liebeskind History of Pain Collection at UCLA. acknowledgments 00a Front_Cervetti 6/27/2012 1:52 PM Page xi I gratefully acknowledge and thank the following librarians and institutions for their assistance and permission to quote materials in their possession: Lilla Vekerdy at the Bernard Becker Medical Library at Washington University, Rachel Ingold at the History of Medicine Collections at the Duke University Medical Center Library,Dawn McInnis at the Clendening Library at the University of Kansas Medical Center, Jessica Murphy and Frederic Burchsted at the Widener Library at Harvard University, Kathryn Hodson at the Special Collections Department of the University of Iowa Libraries in Iowa City, Heather Cole at the Houghton Library, Ellen M. Shea at the Schlesinger Library at the Radcliffe Institute, Jack Eckert at the Harvard Medical Library in the Francis A.Countway Library of Medicine,Megan Sniffin-Marinoff at the Harvard University Archives, Lee Spilberg at the Manuscripts and Archives Division of the New York Public Library, Pamela Miller at the Osler Library of the History of Medicine at McGill University,Nancy Shawcross at the Rare Books and Manuscript Library at the University of Pennsylvania, Hillary S. Kativa at the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, Eva Guggemos at the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, R. Kenny Marone at the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University, Roger Verdon at the Menninger Archives at the Menninger-Baylor College of Medicine,the Alderman Library at the University of Virginia, the Sterling Memorial Library at Yale University, and the Archie Dykes Library at the University of Kansas Medical Center. I thank the Arizona Quarterly and the Journal of Medical Humanities for their permission to reprint portions of chapters 3 and 4.Chapter 3 appeared as“S.Weir Mitchell and His Snakes:Unraveling the‘United Web and Woof of Popular and Scientific Beliefs’” in the Journal of Medical Humanities 28, no. 3 (2007): 119–33, appearing here by permission of Springer. Chapter 4 appeared as “From Civil War to Rest Cure” in the Arizona Quarterly 59, no. 3 (2003): 69–96, appearing here by permission of the Regents of the University of Arizona. I thank the College of Physicians of Philadelphia, the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, and the Rare Books and Manuscript Library at the University of Pennsylvania for their kind permission to reproduce illustrative material. I am most grateful to Patrick Alexander, Patricia A Mitchell, and Stephanie Lang at Pennsylvania State University Press for their support and to Nicholas Taylor for his editorial guidance.I am also grateful to Sally Ebest,Tom...