‘The Sad Language of Pain’: S. Weir Mitchell, the American Civil War, and Interpreting Physical Suffering

Abstract

This chapter uses the work of the American Civil War contract surgeon, S. Weir Mitchell, to think about the ways in which war time pain is understood. Using the ideas of pain as foreign language, performance, and production, Bending considers the broader implications of expressing and understanding pain, as well as of refusing to believe in its existence for another. This chapter looks at Mitchell’s medical texts, Gunshot Wounds (1864) and Injuries of Nerves (1872), and his essay, ‘On Malingering’, which considers how a doctor can know if a soldier is faking his pain, and what he should do in response, and teases out what it means to look at the body in pain, rather than to listen to the words of the wounded soldier.