The Case of George Dedlow, 1866, by Silas Weir MItchell.

Drawings by Lisa Klinger, 2017, printed actual size.

Silas Weir Mitchell (1829  − 1914) was an American physician and fiction writer who coined the term phantom limb (‘thousands of spirit limbs were haunting as many good soldiers, every now and then tormenting them’), which describes the medical phenomenon of feeling the presence of a body part that has been lost or amputated. His short-story The Case of George Dedlow was published anonymously in the July 1866 issue of The Atlantic. It was erroneously mistaken for fact by many readers.