S. Weir Mitchell, physician, man of science, man of letters, man of affairs / by Charles W. Burr, delivered before the College of Physicians of Philadelphia, November 19, 1919.

  • Charles Burr
Date:
1920
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Licence: In copyright

Credit: S. Weir Mitchell, physician, man of science, man of letters, man of affairs / by Charles W. Burr, delivered before the College of Physicians of Philadelphia, November 19, 1919. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    if I say little of it in words, I cannot exclude it from my thought of them and their difficulties. The woman’s desire to be on a level of competition with man and to assume his duties is, I am sure, making mischief, for it is my belief that no length of genera¬ tions of change in her education and modes of activity will ever really alter characteristics. She is physiologically other than the man. I am concerned with her now as she is, only desiring to help her in my small way to be in wiser and more healthful fashion what I believe her Maker meant her to be, and to teach her how not to be that with which physiological construction and the strong ordeals of her sexual life threaten her as no contingencies of man’s career threaten in like measure or like number the feeblest of the masculine sex.” This is science, wisdom and, of course, therefore, truth. Mitchell never retired from active life. He was spared that long period of partial physical death which sometimes precedes mental death: he was spared the very much more horrible and dis¬ tressing thing that is the fate of many men, a long prodromal time of mental decay preceding the last blow of all which gives a tardy release from living. He endured to the end: his final illness was short. He almost had the thing all men should pray for, instead of praying to be spared from, a sudden death. The words he used in his address at the Centennial Celebration of this College in 1887 are appropriate to himself. He said: “As earnestly as our first President, I pray with him that all who sit around me, and all who are to come, do publicly and privately serve their generation.” He, with great ability leading to great results, served his gen¬ eration.