Pioneer Physician, Author. Silas Weir Mitchell was a pioneer American physician, specializing in neurology and considered the "Father of American Neurology". He was also an accomplished novelist and poet. He was born the son of a prominent physician, who could afford to provide his son with an excellent education. After attending the University of Pennsylvania and Jefferson Medical College, graduating with a medical degree in 1850, he spent a year in Paris specializing in neurology. He began his medical career with researching snake venom, which was halted with the American Civil War. He served as a contract army surgeon for the Union Army during the war, specializing in pain from nerve damage. From this experience, he and two colleagues published "Gunshot Wounds and Other Injuries of the Nerves." After the war, he continued his research at the Philadelphia Orthopedic Hospital and Infirmary for Nervous Diseases. From his research, he determined that eyestrain could a cause headache. After studying various types of pain, he discovered the rare inherited vascular pain disorder erythromelalgia or Weir Mitchell's disease, and the regional pain syndrome called causalgia. As an alternative to pharmacological cures, he developed the "Rest Cure," a treatment for the diagnoses of physical and mental exhaustion and hysteria. The "Rest Cure" is no longer being used as a treatment. Along with being a member of several learned national and international societies and earning honorary doctorate degrees from various universities, he was president in 1897 of the Association of American Physicians and in 1908 president of the American Neurological Association, which awards to researchers in the 21st century the S. Weir Mitchell Award. Besides 170 professional publications, he authored his 1903 "Autobiography of a Quack and Other Stories." In 1866 he published in the "Atlantic Monthly," his debut short story, which was about a quadruple amputee from the Civil War, "The Case of George Dedlow." He authored juvenile stories and seven volumes of respectable poetry, including "The Hill of Stones and Other Poems" in 1883. In quick succession, he experienced the death of both parents, a sister, and shortly after childbirth, his first wife at age 23, along with the deaths during the war, which led to the 1899 poem "Of Those Remembered." He excelled in his 19 psychology and historical romance novels, which included "Adventures of François" in 1898 and two novels about George Washington, "The Youth of Washington: Told in the Form of an Autobiography" in 1904 and "The Red City" in 1909. Although he was against women's rights for a higher education or voting, he had several strong-minded women as patients. He was made famous in the January of 1892 edition of "The New England Magazine" with the short story "The Yellow Wallpaper" by American feminist author Charlotte Perkins Stetson. He had been Stetson's physician along with English author, Virginia Woolf, and 1931 Nobel Peace Prize recipient, Jane Adams.