Thomas Short (physician)

A draft deed indicates Thomas Short was the son of a merchant named James Short. From an early point in Thomas's life he was interested in chemistry and mineral water,[1] and as a young man was educated in medicine at Trinity College in Oxford.[3] After his studies he either practiced medicine or was counseled in Coventry from 1723 to 1728, and Short began officially working as a physician in Sheffield around 1725 or 1728.[1] He published books about what he learned as a doctor treating patients. One of Short's earliest publications, in 1728, was medical literature on the negative health effects of obesity: In A Discourse concerning the causes and effects of Corpulency, etc he writes about how fat separates from the blood and why some individuals are more vulnerable to health problems than others.[4]

Short was at a prolific stage of writing medical literature by the 1740s. Retaining his interest in mineral waters from early in his life, he began the decade by publishing An Essay Towards a Natural, Experimental, and Medicinal History of the Principle Mineral Waters.[5] In 1746, he published Medicine Britannica: Or, a Treatise on such Physical Plants as are Generally to be Found in the Fields or Gardens in Great Britain.[6] One of his more famous works was published at the end of the decade in 1749, A General Chronological History of the Air, Weather, Seasons, Meteors, &c., in Sundry Places and Different Times: More Particularly for the Space of 250 Years: Together with Some of Their Most Remarkable Effects on Animal (especially Human) Bodies and Vegetables.[2] His descriptions of sixteenth century influenza pandemics in Europe, their pathologies, and recorded treatments have been cited by medical historians.[7][8][9] Short's works were also read by contemporaries such as Benjamin Franklin.[1]

In 1750, at age 60, Short had his Discourses on Tea, Sugar, Milk, Made-Wines, Spirits, Punch, Tobacco with Plain and Useful Rules for Gouty People published.[10] The same year he also published New Observations, Natural, Moral, Civil, Political, and Medical, on City, Town, and Country Bills of Mortality,[11] his first publication where Short focused his demographic interests[1] discussing how diseases affected and altered populations. This was the checkpoint in his literary career where he became known for his writings on population theory.[1]

In 1762, Short moved to Rotherham, where he lived for 10 years before dying in 1772.[1]