Remembering Silas Weir Mitchell

Today we honor the “father of neurology,” writer-physician Silas Weir Mitchell, on the date of his death in 1914. Beginning with this lifelong congregant, St. Stephen’s became a seminal force in American healing ministries well into the 1980s--thanks in part to the church’s close alliance with its neighboring medical schools and hospitals (University of Pennsylvania and Jefferson). Dr. Mitchell’s work shaped the pioneering therapies of his close friend, St. Stephen’s rector Dr. Elwood Worcester, in his later outreach program at Emmanuel Church in Boston. In the 1940s, St. Stephen’s itself grew into the acknowledged center of a very different healing ministry under Rev. Alfred W. Price until well after his retirement in 1971.