Memoir of Owen Jones Wister, M. D / [S. Weir Mitchell].

  • Mitchell, S. Weir (Silas Weir), 1829-1914.
Date:
1896
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Memoir of Owen Jones Wister, M. D / [S. Weir Mitchell]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    neuralgia and increasing insomnia. Only his abstemious habits and the fact that for so many hours of the day he was breathing the fresh air of the open country enabled him to hold out. The years 1865, 1867,1868, and 1869 brought death to some of his nearest and dearest relatives; twice with shock¬ ing suddenness. He did not pause in his work, although his sleeplessness and overstrained condition became alarming, until one evening he found himself unable to write a prescription. He was then nearly forty-four, but even when most out of health was taken by strangers to be under thirty-five. He passed the summer of 1869 in vain search of repose and sleep, and, in May, 1870, he sailed for Europe with his wife and son, and remained there for three years. In London Owen Wister met Drs. Grailey Hewitt, Acland (now Sir Henry), Anstie, and Hr. Henri Gueneau de Mussy, and formed a friendly acquaintance with the last two, which was renewed in subse¬ quent years. Even yet at this time of his best opportunity his nerves would not tolerate the least thought or talk on medical matters, which cut him off from much of the interest of inter¬ course with men of his own profession. His keenest enjoyment abroad arose from his truly American love for what is old. Old legends, old names, old customs, old families, old ruins, old relics, old saws and proverbs, especially if Scotch, were his delight during the first year, when he was debarred from many of a traveller’s pleasures. The elasticity of his tempera¬ ment, his mercurial disposition, and unquenchable animal spirits came to his aid, however, as well as the extraordinary youthfulness, mental and physical, which made him look and seem fifteen years below his age. His headaches, as we see so often, ceased by degrees as he became older, and during later life he was almost free from them and from neuralgia; he always continued to suffer more or less from dyspepsia, and although insomnia gave way before rest and change in the course of a twelvemonth, the tendency never left him alto¬ gether. In 1873 Owen Wister came back to America, but not to Ger¬ mantown, as he did not wish to be drawn into his former round.