Page:American Medical Biographies - Kelly, Burrage.djvu/1066

NAME SHEW 1044 SHEW were: presidency of the New York State Medical Society; presidency Northern New York Medical Society, and of the St. Law- rence County Medical Society. Mem. by Dr. J. M. Hosier in Tr. Med. Soc. State of New York, 1898. Phys. and Surgs. of the U. S., V. B. Atkinson, 1878. Shew, Abram Marvin (1841-1886) Abram Marvin Shew was born, September 18, 1841, at Le Roy, Jefferson County, New York, and was the youngest of a family of eleven children. His father, Godfrey J. Shew, an influential citizen and prominent Presby- terian, was descended from a German noble- man who emigrated to America about 1750. When eleven years of age Abram removed with his parents to Watertown, N. Y., where he received his education at the Jefferson County Institute. It was his intention to enter college at Schenectady, but he was prevented from doing so by the outbreak of the war in 1861. Having decided upon his profession, he entered upon the study of medicine at the Jefferson Medical College in Philadelphia as one of the pupils of Professor W. H. Pan- coast (q. v.). During his course of study his attention was called to the subject of insanity, and he spent some time as an assistant at the New York Asylum for Insane Criminals at Auburn. He then returned to his second course of lectures at Philadelphia and gradu- ated at Jefferson Medical College in 1864. He was immediately appointed assistant surgeon of the United States Volunteers, and was assigned to duty as post surgeon at Hilton Head, South Carolina. After six months he took charge of the post hospital at Beaufort, where he remained until the close of the war. Upon his return to Philadelphia he was appointed one of the resident physicians of Blockley Hospital, and finding his interest in the subject of insanity reawakened, he de- cided to make it the specialty of his profes- sional life. Here he made the acquaintance of Miss Dix, a lady widely known for her interest in the insane, who became markedly interested in Dr. Shew, and through whom he was later prominently brought to the notice of the trustees of the Connecticut Hospital for the Insane as eminently fitted to organize and take charge of their institution, which had just been chartered. Leaving Blockley he became assistant physician at the New Jer- sey State Lunatic Asylum, where he remained until he received the appointment of super- intendent to the Connecticut Hospital, during the summer of 1866, a position he held to the close of his life. By earnest effort he succeeded in gaining for the institution its present site, and he devoted the autumn and winter of 1866-7 to the study of hospital construction, maturing plans and formulating specifications. He had large executive ability and the institution of which he had charge gives abundant evidence of his thorough ap- preciation of the needs of the state in pro- viding for the insane, as well as of his skill in carrying forward such plans as were adopted. He constantly sought to inspire his patients with the belief that he was their friend as well as their physician, and his cheerful face and hopeful words, his con- stant anticipation of brighter days and better things to come for them, together with the magnetism of his manner and bearing, caused them to become greatly attached to him. No one during his twenty years' residence in Mid- dletown can be found who ever knew him to forget his dignity or give a hasty or angry answer. On Wednesday, January 27, 1869, he married Elizabeth Collins Palmer, daughter of the Hon. Lewis Palmer of Watertown, N. Y. She died January 19, 1874, of puerperal fever, after the birth of their second child. On the 12th of June, 1878, he married Clara Loomis Bradley, only daughter of S. L. Brad- ley of Auburn, N. Y. She died September 22, 1879, of diphtheria. On October 23, 1884, he married Clara Brown, daughter of Samuel Brown of Staten Island, who survived her husband, as did a son and daughter by his first wife. Dr. Shew's death was caused through a fall, received while carrying one of the heavy case-record books down the main staircase of the hospital, that produced spinal concus- sion, followed by inflammation of the spinal membranes. It traveled from below up- wards until it terminated his life, somewhat suddenly, by an apoplectic eft'usion at the base of the brain, on April 12, 1886. He found time to give to the literature of the profession the results of his observation and experience. Besides his annual reports to the trustees of the hospital, he wrote the following papers : "History of the Connec- ticut Hospital for Insane" (1876) ; "The In- sane Colony at Gheel" (1879) ; "What Can Be Done for the Indigent Insane" (1879) ; "A Glance at the Past and Present Condition of the Insane" (1880). In 1878 he visited Europe and investi- gated the treatment of the insane at various foreign asylums and at the Insane Colony of Gheel. He visited California several times I