This collection consists of two letters, a pencil drawing, a note, a calling card, and an inscribed edition of S. Weir Mitchell, The Wager and Other Poems. The two letters include one written by S. Weir Mitchell to Dr. William C. Hollopeter, clarifying that a mutual acquaintance is residing in a boarding house not the Pennsylvania Hospital for the Insane. The other letter is from Francis Everett, presumably to Dr. Hollopeter, concerning any involvement he may have had in an 1877 abortion malpractice case in Muncy, Pennsylvania. Hollopeter reportedly departed Muncy before the death of pregnant Margaret Keller and the subsequent abortion and malpractice case against physician Dr. James Rankin. The pencil drawing depicts stacked coffins including a pair of sarcophagi in an underground room with a small barred window. The note is a thank you from Mitchell to "Gertrude," and the calling card is for Dr. Mitchell's address on Walnut Street. The copy of S. Weir Mitchell's The Wager and Other Poems (New York: Century, 1900) is inscribed to Gertrude.
Silas Weir Mitchell was born February 15, 1829, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, to John Kearsley Mitchell (1798-1858) and Sarah Matilda (Henry) Mitchell (1800-1872). He studied at the University of Pennsylvania and Jefferson Medical College where he graduated with a medical degree in 1850. He married Mary Middleton Elwyn (1838-1865) with whom he had two children: John Kearsley Mitchell (1859-1917) and Alfred Langdon Elwyn Mitchell (1862-1935). In 1875, he married Mary Cadwalader (1835-1914) with whom he had one child, Maria Gouverneur Mitchell (1876-1898). He died on January 4, 1914, in Philadelphia and is buried in Woodlands Cemetery in Philadelphia.
An internal medicine doctor, Mitchell is recognized as a pioneer in neurology. After serving at Turner's Lane Military Hospital during the Civil War, which specialized in nervous disorders, Mitchell dedicated his life to the specialty. His most famous contribution to the field was the "rest cure" used primarily to treat supposed nervous or hysterical women (made infamous in patient Charlotte Perkins Gilman's story "The Yellow Wallpaper"). Mitchell was also a writer of medical monographs, novels, and poems.