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 loc.03249.002.jpg loc.03249.004.jpg loc.03249.003.jpg his books
and I am gratefully yr. friend Weir Mitchell Walt. Whitman Dec 15, 1889 loc.03249.005.jpg loc.03249.006.jpgCorrespondent:
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.