Page:American Medical Biographies - Kelly, Burrage.djvu/1064

NAME SHAW 1042 SHECUT position of medical superintendent of the Lunatic Asylum of Kings County, where he instituted and carried out many needed and praiseworthy reforms. He was appointed lec- turer on the diseases of the nervous system at the Long Island College Hospital, and advanced to the position of clinical professor of diseases of the mind and the nervous sys- tem, increasing his reputation in the field of clinical instruction. Twice president of the New York Neurological Society, he was also elected president in 1893 of the Medical So- ciety of the County of Kings and consulting physician to the State Hospital for the Insane, Poughkeepsie, New York, and occupied the position of neurologist in St. Peter's Hospital, the Long Island College Hospital, the Brook- lyn Hospital, St. Catherine Hospital, the Long Island Throat Hospital, the Brooklyn Eye and Ear Hospital, and the Kings County Hos- pital. He held membership in the New York Neurological Society, the Brooklyn Patho- logical Society, the American Neurological Society, the Medical Society of the County of Kings, the Neurological Society of Brook- lyn, the Medical Society of the State of New York and the Brooklyn Anatomical and Surgi- cal Society. Dr. Shaw contributed many valuable papers on subjects relating to the nervous system, reading them before medical societies and pub- lishing them in medical journals. The fol- lowing may be mentioned: "Muscular Atro- phies in Locomotor Ataxia;" "Hemiplegia in Children ;" "Progressive Muscular Atrophy and its Pathology;" "Anomalous Cases of Locomotor Ataxia;" "General Paralysis of the Insane;" "The Practicability and Value of Non-Restraint Treatment of the Insane ;" "Raynaud's Disease." He contributed to "International Clinics" and for a time was an associate editor of the American Medical Digest, and he wrote "Essentials of Nervous Diseases and Insanity." His efforts were directed and applied to the more humane treatment of the insane. The commissioners of charity, moved by his persistent impor- tunities, gave the good doctor all their aid to improve the condition of the poor who had become insane from want, anxiety, hard work and improper food. There was a praise- worthy effort to transform the modern "Bed- lam," as it were, back into the Home of Bread, the "Bethlehem," in which the better emblem of sanity might come with hope and peace. Chains, shackles, handcuffs and strait- jackets were taken off. Occupations and amusements were provided. Cottages were built for the less violently insane, and better sanitary conditions were established. Shaw set out on his life work with ambition, industry, perseverance and high aims and made himself master in every department of his specialty. Amer. Jour. Insan., Bait., 1900-1, vol. Ivii (B. Onuf). Bruoklyn Med. Jour., 1900, vol. xiv. Shecut, John Linnaeus Edward Whitridge (1770-1836) This physician was born at Beaufort, South Carolina, December 4, 1770, descended from French Huguenots who sought refuge in Switzerland, near Geneva, whence his parents, Abraham and Marie Barbary Shecut, emi- grated to South Carolina in 1768-9. He began to study medicine under Dr. David Ramsay (q. v.), and continued his studies at the University of Pennsylvania, but did not graduate. He was a member of the Literary and Philo- sophical Society of South Carolina, which he organized in 1813, first as the Antiquarian Society. He was first president of the Amer- ican Homespun Company, the first cotton factory in the state, which he himself founded in 1820. Dr. Shecut began to practise at Charleston and continued in active duty until death. He was one of the pioneers in the therapeutic ap- plication of electricity, and in 1806 exhibited a machine which he had designed for its adminis- tration. In his discussion of the yellow-fever epidemic of 1817 he advanced the theory that the cause of this malady was "a peculiar de- rangement of the atmospheric air" depriving it of "a. due proportion of the electric fluid," acting in conjunction with "a peculiar state or diathesis in the animal economy particu- larly pre-disposing to disease." Dr. Shecut's interests were not limited by medicine, as shown by his activity in scientific, literary and industrial fields. He gave popular lectures on electricity in Charleston in 1822. His work on the flora of Carolina was written for the purpose of stimulating an interest in the study of botany and to simplify the Lin- naean system. In later life he became actively interested in theology and organized the body of Trinitarian Universalists. This organiza- tion seems to have been rather short-lived, for the founder became allied with the Methodists, of which denomination he was a member at the time of his death. He married Sarah Cannon, January 26, 1792, and had four children, one of whom, William Harrel, studied medicine. He married his second wife, Susannah Ballard,