Sacramento County
Biographies
FREDERICK E.
SHAW, M.D.
A favorable opportunity to engage in
professional activities as resident physician at the Sisters' hospital was the
immediate cause of the location of Dr. Shaw in Sacramento, where at first in this position and later as a private
practitioner he has won his way to an enviable standing among the men of his
calling in the capital city. Those competent to speak with authority
assert that his knowledge of materia medica and surgery, backed by a broad general fund of information
in every sphere of thought, places him in sympathetic association with the most
talented members of the profession in his city, while also enabling him to
appreciate with delicate intuition the manifold openings which make the future
rich in promise to students of the science. Scarcely yet in the prime of
manhood, many years of professional usefulness may be predicted for him, with a
growing reputation abundantly merited by his judicious studies of the science
of therapeutics, by his skill in diagnosis and by his discriminating accuracy
in the selection of remedial agencies for the relief of pain and the conquering
of disease.
A son of Charles F. and Mary Shaw, and a
member of an old honored eastern family, Dr. Frederick E. Shaw was born at Haverhill, Mass., September 6, 1879, and received his education in the splendid institutions boasted by the
old Bay state. During 1896 he was graduated from high school and he then
studied in Phillips academy at Exeter, N. H., for a year, after which he relinquished the
classical course for professional specialties. He began to take medical
lectures in Tufts Medical college at Boston, Mass., where he remained a diligent student of therapeutics and
surgery until his removal from the Atlantic coast to the shores of the
Pacific. Immediately after his arrival in San Francisco he resumed the studies of his preferred science and
availed himself of every opportunity for the enlarging of his mental equipment
for professional work. During 1908 he was graduated from the Cooper
Medical college and immediately afterward he came to Sacramento, where he and his wife, formerly Miss Lyla
Marie Kimball, of Haverhill, Mass., have won a host of warm personal friends in the most
cultured social circles.
Reared in the faith of the Roman Catholic church, devoted to her doctrines and well-informed
concerning her history, Dr. Shaw has been a generous contributor to her many
splendid philanthropies and has assisted with characteristic liberality those
movements tending toward her larger usefulness or more complete equipment for
work. The Young Men's Institute and the Knights of Columbus number him
among their leading members, and in the latter he now officiates as grand
knight. Political matters have not interested him to the point of
enlisting partisan preferences, his attitude being independent and his ballot
favoring men and measures rather than any special party. In the fall of
1911 he was elected a member of the board of education of Sacramento, serving until July 1, 1912, when the new charter came into effect and abolished the
old board of education. During his service as trustee he raised the
schedule of teachers' salaries to that of the leading cities of the state, and
established a school of manual training and domestic science at Oak Park. During his term he was also instrumental in
abolishing many unsanitary conditions in the schools, secured the passage of a
bill for building two new open-air kindergartens, and was active generally in
building up the schools in all departments. The Sutter and University
clubs have brought him into touch with many of the most influential citizens of
Sacramento, and his participation in club activities has been
constant and helpful. With the interest which a successful practitioner
always feels in his chosen profession, he has interested himself in studying
the latest developments of the science, in perusing literature pertaining to
the subject and in keeping in touch with the work of the various organizations
to which he belongs, those being the American Medical Association, the
Sacramento County Medical Society and the Northern District Medical
Association.
Transcribed by Sally Kaleta.
Source: Willis,
William L., History of Sacramento
County, California, Pages 613-614. Historic Record Company, Los Angeles, CA. 1913.
© 2006 Sally Kaleta.