MITCHELL 



3866 



MITES 



S. WEIR MITCHELL 



superseded the board. Throughout his career 

 he has been an advocate of the "square deal" 

 on the part of labor unions. He has written 

 Organized Labor: Its Problems, Purposes, and 

 Ideals; and The Wage Earner and His Prob- 

 lem. 



MITCHELL, SILAS WEIR (1829-1914), better 

 known as S. WEIR MITCHELL, a notable Ameri- 

 can physician, who also achieved fame as a 

 novelist and poet. He occupies a unique place 

 in American letters in that he made use of his 

 professional expe- 

 riences in his lit- 

 erary work. He 

 was born in Phila- 

 delphia, studied at 

 the University of 

 Pennsylvania and 

 was graduated 

 from Jefferson 

 Medical College 

 in 1850, beginning 

 medical practice 

 in his home city. 

 During the War 

 of Secession he was an army surgeon and as- 

 sumed charge of soldiers suffering from nervous 

 disorders, after which he developed the "rest 

 cure" treatment which found world-wide favor 

 among physicians. Before the close of the war 

 Dr. Mitchell began to write stories for children, 

 but until 1880 most of his publications were 

 medical treatises. In that year he published the 

 novels Thee and Thou and Hephzibah Guin- 

 ness, and from that time wrote novels, stories 

 and poems at regular intervals. His first popu- 

 lar success, Hugh Wynne, Free Quaker, pub- 

 lished in 1897, is a story of the American Revo- 

 lution, and is now considered one of the best 

 historical novels of American literature. Other 

 works include Dr. North and His Friends, The 

 Red City, Westways and The Comfort of the 

 Hills. His last novel, John Sherwood, Iron- 

 master, was published in 1911; in 1914, after 

 his death, Complete Poems was published. 



MITCHELL, S. D., the county seat of Davi- 

 son County, in the southeastern part of the 

 state, sixty-seven miles west and north of 

 Sioux Falls and seventy miles northwest of 

 Yankton. It is on the James River and on the 

 Chicago & North Western and the Chicago, 

 Milwaukee & Saint Paul railroads. The popu- 

 lation, 6,515 in 1910, was 7,785 in 1915, accord- 

 ing to the state census. 



Mitchell is the seat of the Dakota Wesleyan 

 University (Methodist Episcopal). The build- 



ings and institutions of the city include a Fed- 

 eral building, Carnegie Library, city hall, opera 

 house and the Saint Joseph's and Methodist 

 hospitals. The city is situated in an extensive, 

 rapidly developing agricultural region and is an 

 important shipping point for grain and live 

 stock. The industrial enterprises include a 

 creamery, grain elevators, lumber mills, rail- 

 road and machine shops and cigar and candy 

 factories. There is a large wholesale trade in 

 groceries, fruits, etc. 



A corn palace is the principal feature of an 

 annual fall festival which attracts many vis- 

 itors. More than 2,000 bushels of corn are 

 used each year in the exterior decoration of the 

 building. The town was settled in 1879 and 

 became a city in 1883. T.J.M. 



MITES, numerous species of small insects, 

 varying in size from tiny creatures almost in- 

 visible to the naked eye, to certain forms half 

 an inch long. More than one-half are parasitic, 

 at least during part of their lives; some are 

 terrestrial or aquatic, and others live in cheese, 

 sugar and flour (see PARASITE). The body and 

 legs are covered with bristles, hair or scales, 

 which are characteristic in each species. The 

 spinning mites, or little red spiders, produce a 



MITES 



(a) Cheese mite; (6) under side of the itch 

 mite. The illustrations are greatly enlarged. 



slender thread as they go, and the accumulated 

 threads of many individuals make a whitish 

 web. Another form, called ticks, infests animals, 

 birds and snakes. Their mouths are formed 

 for cutting into the skin and sucking the blood. 

 This family produces the most injurious of all 

 mites, namely, the cattle tick, which spreads dis- 

 ease among cattle. Itch mites burrow into the 

 skin of man and animals. Formerly they were 

 not uncommon, but cleanliness has largely de- 

 stroyed them in the case of man. The majority 

 of mites are injurious, but some are beneficial 

 in destroying other insects, and thus are active 

 in the preservation of plants. See TICKS. 



