Page:A cyclopedia of American medical biography vol. 2.djvu/412

 SHERMAN

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SHIPMAN

He married his second wife, Susannah BaUard, on February 7, 1S05, and had five children more by this marriage.

He died at his home at Charleston, June 1, 1S37, of paralysis. A voluminous writer, the following are among his chief works :

"Flora Carolinensis, an Historical, Medical and Economical Display of the Vegetable Kingdom," Charleston, South Carolina, 1806.

"Medical and Philosophical Essays," Charleston, South Carolina, 1819, contain- ing topographical, historical and other sketches of the city of Charleston; "An Essay on the Prevailing Fever of 1817;" "An Essay on Contagions and Infec- tions;" "An Essay on the Principles and Properties of the Electric Fluid;" "The Elements of Natural Philosophy and a New Theory of the Earth;" "The Eagle of the Mohawks," a novel. New York; "The Scout, or the Fort of St. Nicholas," a novel of the seventeenth century, New York.

There is also in possession of his descendants a manuscript work entitled "Trinitarian Universalists."

R. W., Jr.

Sherman, Benjamin Franklin (1817- 1897).

The youngest of five brothers, all physicians; he was a descendant of one Henry Sherman, born in Devonshire, England, in 1516, and John Sherman, who came to Connecticut in 1634. Benjamin was born in Barre, Vermont, May 241 1817, graduated at the Albany Medica- College and finally settled down to prac, tise in Ogdensburg where he married Charlotte C. Chipman of Waddington and had five children two of whom became doctors. He began practice when medical education was hard to obtain.

Taking long journeys by stage and sailing vessels to reach recognized teachers, he fitted himself to be one of the best men around. He eagerly kept pace with every advance, so that, in his eightieth year, younger men came to him to take advice and borrow books and |

instruments. Often he had to mount at sunrise, fill his saddlebags with home manufactured drugs and set out on a long tour not knowing whether a major operation or a delicate piece of eye surgery would be required en route. As physician and chemist he was also called on for evidence in important trials and litigations. Among his appoint- ments were: presidency of the New York State Medical Society; presidency North- ern New York Medical Society, and of the St. Lawrence County Medical Society.

Mem. by Dr. J. M. Mosher in Tr. Med. Soc. State of N. York, 1898.

Shipman, Azariah B. (1803-1868).

It seems a little curious that more than once the sons of a farmer, brought up in absolutely healthy surroundings, should turn to the study and cure of disease. Daniel and Sarah Eastman Sliipman looked for one of their five boys to manage the farm but away they all went, Parson, and John, Daniel and Joseph and Azariah. Azariah was born on March 22, 1803, and helped till he was seventeen on a new farm at Pitcher, Chenango County. Then, without money or influential friends, doing farm work in summer and teaching in winter, he determinately gave his odd leisure to studying medicine, two years later work- ing under his eldest brother who had become a doctor in Delphi, New York, and in 1826, with a hcense from the County Medical Society, he too prac- tised in that county, successfully it may be presumed, as he was able to marry, in 1828, Emily Clark, step-daugh- ter of a Mr. Richard Taylor. In Cort- land, in SjTacuse, as professor of anatomy in the University of Laporte, Indiana, he had a fine reputation for surgery and his reputation led to his doing nearly all the important operations for miles around, some, such as removal of tumors, trache- otomy, Uthotomy, imder difficult circum- stances. Three years as army surgeon during the war broke do^v^l his health, and a tour in Europe in 1868 was disap- pointing in recuperatory results. He