American Medical Biographies/Shipman, Azariah B.
Shipman, Azariah B. (1803–1868)
Daniel and Sarah Eastman Shipman looked for one of their five boys to manage the farm at Pitcher, Chenango County, New York. Azariah was born on March 22, 1803, and helped till he was seventeen. Then without money or influential friends, doing farm work in summer and teaching in winter, he gave his odd leisure to studying medicine, two years later working under his eldest brother, who had become a doctor in Delphi, New York, and in 1826, with a license from the County Medical Society, he too practised in that county, successfully it may be presumed, as he was able to marry, in 1828, Emily Clark, stepdaughter of a Mr. Richard Taylor. In Cortland, in Syracuse, and as professor of anatomy in the University of Laporte, Indiana, he had a good reputation for surgery and this reputation led to his doing nearly all the important operations for miles around, many, such as removal of tumors, tracheotomy, lithotomy, were done under difficult circumstances. Three years as army surgeon during the war broke down his health, and a tour in Europe in 1868 was disappointing in recuperatory results. He reached Paris after the trip, failing under a pulmonary affection, and on September 15, 1868, he sank rapidly and died.
His keen desire for knowledge of all kinds was starved in his boyhood, and his library, with its old books and curiosities, told how one day he meant to enjoy a learned leisure which, though long expected, never came.