Page:American Medical Biographies - Kelly, Burrage.djvu/1061

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1039
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SHAPLEIGH 1039 SHATTUCK Shapleigh, Elitha Bacon (1823-1892) Best known as an expert in forensic medi- cine, Elisha Bacon Shapleigh was born in York County, Maine, November 6, 1823, a descendant of one Nicholas Shapleigh who emigrated from England in 1630. His A. B. was from Yale in 1846, his M. D. from the University of Pennsylvania in 1849. Immediately after graduation he settled in Lowell, Massachusetts, but in 1851 removed to Philadelphia, where he married, in June, 1864, Anna, daughter of William Lloyd. He was a copious writer for the medical press, especially on subjects connected with toxicology and legal medicine. Dr. Shapleigh was a man of medium size, but of heavy build. He had dark skin, hair and eyes, and wore a full beard. He was slow and deliberate in speech, but fond of telling stories; he was ever saying "that reminds me." He was conversant with the literature of law as well as of medicine. Thomas Hall Shastid. Memoir, J. Collins, 1893. Private sources. Shattuck, Benjamin (1742-1794) Benjamin Shattuck, a physician of Temple- ton, Massachusetts, was a descendant of Wil- liam Shattuck, who was born in England and died in Watertown, Massachusetts, August 14, 1672, aged fifty-eight. Benjamin was born in Littleton, Massachusetts, November 11, 1742, the grandson of the Rev. Benjamin Shattuck, first minister of Littleton, and son of Stephen Shattuck, farmer, a man of great physical and mental powers and a warm patriot. On the memorable April 19, 1775, after he was sixty-five, he shouldered his gun and marched to Concord and followed the retreating enemy to Cambridge. Benjamin's grandmother was a granddaughter of the cele- brated John Sherman, clergyman and meta- physician. He w-as fitted for college by Jeremiah Dum- mer Rogers and graduated A. M. from Har- vard College in 1765. After studying medi- cine with Dr. Oliver Prescott (q. v.), of Groton, Massachusetts, he settled in Temple- ton, and practised there until his death in that town, January 14, 1794. April 12, 1772, he married Lucy, daughter of Jonathan Barron, a brave provincial officer who vi'as killed in "Johnson's Fight" at Lake George, September 8, 1755. They had seven children. Dr. Shattuck was settled in a region with but few' inhabitants; instruments and books were scarce. By perseverance and sagacity coupled with unremitting labor he built up a large practice and was accounted the foremost physician of the county. The quaint funeral sermon preached by the Rev. Ebenezer Sparhawk, in which each of the surviving relatives, most of them present, was apostrophized in turn and the departed eulogized without touching on the actual facts of his life, was characteristic of a custom of that time. Walter L. Burrage. Shattuck Memorials, 1855, Lemuel Shattuck. Discourse by Ebenezer Sparhawk, A. M., Boston, 1822. Genealog. Dictny. of the First Settlers of New Eng., James Savage, 1861. Hist. Har. Medical School, T. F. Harrington, 190S. Amer. Med. Biog., James Thacher, 1828. Shattuck, George Cheyne (1784-1854) George Cheyne Shattuck, Boston physician, was born in Templeton, July 17, 1784, the youngest son of Dr. Benjamin (q. v.) and Lucy Barron Shattuck, and was named for George Cheyne, a London and Bath physician, who practised between 1671 and 1743. Shattuck was educated at Dartmouth Col- lege, where he received his A. B. in 1803 ; M. B. in 1806; the honorary M. D. in 1812, and LL. D. in 1853, meanwhile receiving the M. D. from the University of Pennsylvania in 1807, and the honorary A. M. from Har- vard in the same year. He was a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and began to practise in Boston in 1807, and continued there until his death, March 18, 1854. While a student at Dartmouth Shattuck formed a friendship with Nathan Smith (q. v.) that ceased only at Dr. Smith's death in 1829, and also with Lyman Spalding (q. v.), then lecturing at Dartmouth on chemistry. Dr. Spalding got his young friend to lecture on the theory and practice of medicine at the Fairfield Medical School, in western New York State, for two winters and kept up a life-long friendship with him. Dr. Shattuck married Eliza Cheever Davis, daughter of Caleb Davis, and lived and died in his house at the corner of Staniford and Cambridge Streets in the West End of Bos- ton. He had a very large family practice and was noted for his benevolence. Dr. Edward Jarvis (q. v.) relates of him that upon many occasions he was called upon to treat the needy students of Andover and Cambridge. After hearing complaints and prescribing for them, he would hand the sufferer a prescription and say courteously, "Now, sir, will you be good enough to carry this prescription to the apothecary, 134 Wash- ington Street, and while he is putting up the