Page:American Medical Biographies - Kelly, Burrage.djvu/1073

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page needs to be proofread.
NAME
1051
NAME

SHURLY 1051 SHURLY «rn Territories, under the direction of Con- gress, selected as his assistant the young scientist, whose fitness for the position had been shown by his previous labors. Con- jointly with his friend, the late Prof. Luns- ford P. Yandell (q. v.), he furnished, in 1847, for the Western Journal of Medicine •and Surgery, an elaborate paper entitled "Con- tributions to the Geology of Kentucky," in which he attempted to show the connection between certain geological formations and par- ticular diseases. The paper attracted much attention, and was widely copied by the medi- cal and secular press. Other positions of trust and honor awaited Dr. Shumard. In 1850 he assisted in making a geological survey of Oregon ; and soon after his return home he was employed on the palaeontology of the Red River country, in continuation of the explorations com- menced by his brother, Dr. George G. Shumard. In 1853 he was appointed assistant geologist and palaeontologist in the Missouri Survey. Five years afterwards he was com- missioned as geologist for Texas. But, after he had been busy at work for two years, and was almost ready to publish his report, he was suddenly, in consequence of a change in the governorship of the State, superseded, and of course obliged to retire from the field. This proved to be his last effort as a public geologist. He then began practice in St. Louis and in 1866 was elected professor of obstetrics in the University of Missouri, thus adding somewhat to his slender income. After some time, however, his health broke down, and he was obliged to abandon, not only his chair, biit his practice. On the fourteenth of April, 1867, he died of pulmonary trouble, in the forty-ninth year of his age. At the time of his decease he was presi- dent of the St. Louis Academy of Science. All of his contributions to scientific journals, which were numerous and varied, had a bear- ing more or less direct upon geology and palaeontology, with the history of whose progress on this continent his name will live. Samuel D. Gross. Autobiography of S. D. Gross, Phila., 1887. Shurly. Ernest Lorenzo (1845-1913) Ernest L. Shurly of Detroit was an execu- tive and organizer besides being a pioneer in the crusade against tuberculosis. He was born in Buffalo, New York, June 11, 1845, and died at his home in Detroit, Michigan, May 10, 1913. His early education was obtained at Waukesha, Wisconsin, Roches- ter, New York, and Buffalo. He received an M. D. from the Medical Department of the University of Buffalo in 1866, was interne at the Buffalo General Hospital and entered the Medical Corps of the United States Army. After seeing service in the Indian Campaigns of the late sixties he settled in Manistee, Michigan, in 1870 and practised medicine for two years. Moving to Detroit in 1872 he associated himself with the Detroit College of Medicine, becoming instructor in minor surgery there the following year. Later he filled the chairs of materia medica, clinical medicine and laryngology, establishing the last professorship himself. In addition to his work as a teacher, in which he had a record of clearness, direct- ness and impress'iveness, he was actively con- nected with the staffs of the Harper, St. Luke's, St. Mary's and the Woman's hos- pitals. When the Harper Hospital was mod- ernized and enlarged Dr. Shurly undertook the task of complete reorganization in his capacity as chief of staff and was successful in raising both the administrative and the medical departments to a high state of efficiency. As a practitioner he kept abreast with the times and in the field of thoracic surgery was something of a pioneer. He was among the first to use electricity in the treatment of diseases of the nose and pharynx and he devised a set of instruments for the appli- cation of the galvanocautery in this domain. The following is Dr. Shurly's own report of his literary work: "Small book on phthisis pulmonalis (1883) ; Translation, Carl Michel, On the Nasal Passages (1884) ; Treatise on Diseases of the Nose and Throat (1900) ; Address on Medicine, American Medical Association (1892), and various papers too numerous to mention, I fear." He was a careful and painstaking man and deserves credit for taking exhaustive histories of his patients, recording himself the facts in full detail ; and he adhered to this custom scrupu- lousl}' even at the busiest period of his career. Through the instrumentality of Dr. Shurly the first camp in Michigan for the treat- ment of tuberculosis was established at Eloise, Wayne County. He maintained a laboratory for the study of this disease at Harper Hospital, and had another laboratory for animal experimentation at his residence. The day will never be forgotten when his three monkeys, each the subject of an im- portant study in tuberculosis, escaped from confinement into the tree-tops of the city,