The Walt Whitman Archive
Life & Letters
Correspondence
About this Item
Title: Silas Weir Mitchell to Walt Whitman, 15 December 1889
Date: December 15, 1889
Whitman Archive ID: loc.03249
Source: The Charles E. Feinberg Collection of the Papers of Walt Whitman, 1839–1919, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. Transcribed from digital images or a microfilm reproduction of the original item. For a description of the editorial rationale behind our treatment of the correspondence, see our statement of editorial policy.
Contributors to digital file: Kirby Little, Breanna Himschoot, Ian Faith, and Stephanie Blalock
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1524 Walnut Street
Philadelphia1
My Dear good gray Poet—
Ever since I bought the first edition of Leaves of grass we have been friends through your books—I warmly thank you for this precious memorial of a man whose life work & example are better even than his books
and I am
gratefully
yr. friend
Weir Mitchell
Walt. Whitman
Dec 15, 1889
Correspondent:
Dr. S. (Silas) Weir
Mitchell (1829–1914) was a specialist in nervous disorders as well as a
poet and a novelist. On April 18, 1878, Whitman had his second interview with
Dr. Mitchell, who attributed his earlier paralysis to a small rupture of a blood
vessel in the brain but termed Whitman's heart "normal and healthy." Whitman
also noted that "the bad spells [Mitchell] tho't
recurrences by habit (? sort of automatic)" (Whitman's
Commonplace Book, Charles E. Feinberg Collection of the Papers of Walt Whitman,
1839–1919, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.). Mitchell was the first
physician to indicate the psychosomatic nature of many of Whitman's
ailments.
Notes:
1. This letter is addressed: Walt Whitman Esq | Camden | New Jersey. It is postmarked: PHILADELPHIA | DEC16 | 7 PM | 89, CAMDEN, N.J. | DEC | 17 | 6AM | 1889 | REC'D. [back]