Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 52.djvu/164

 Short made numerous communications to the Royal Society between 1736 and 1763. Several related to his observations of auroras, eclipses, and occultations; others were of greater interest. For an hour near sunrise on 23 Oct. 1740 he viewed Venus attended by a satellite showing an identical phase (Phil. Trans. xli. 646). The illusion is difficult to explain. On 7 Dec. 1749 he described a kind of equatoreal instrument, of which he had constructed three, one bought by Count Bentinck for the prince of Orange (ib. xlvi. 241). He observed the transit of Mercury on 6 May 1753 (ib. xlviii. 192), and the transit of Venus on 6 June 1761 at Savile House, by the command of the Duke of York, who, with several other members of the royal family, was present on the occasion (ib. lii. 178). From a discussion of observations of the same occurrence made in various parts of Europe and at the Cape of Good Hope, Short deduced a solar parallax of 8″.65, long accepted as authoritative (ib. lii. 611, liii. 300). He, moreover, determined the difference of longitude between the observatories of Greenwich and Paris by observations of four transits of Mercury (ib. liii. 158). A sealed paper delivered by him to the Royal Society on 30 April 1752 was opened after his death and read publicly on 25 Jan. 1770. It described a method of working object-lenses to a truly spherical form (ib. lix. 507). His workshop was in Surrey Street, Strand. Besides being versed in mathematics and optics, he was a good general scholar.

 SHORT, THOMAS, M.D. (1635–1685), physician, son of the Rev. William Short, was born at Easton, Suffolk, in 1635. He was sent to the grammar school of Bury St. Edmunds, and thence to St. John's College, Cambridge, where he was admitted a sizar on 25 Feb. 1649–50, aged 14 (, Admissions, i. 94). He graduated B.A. in 1653, and was created M.D. by royal mandate on 26 June 1668. He settled in London and was admitted a candidate at the College of Physicians in December 1668, but was not elected a fellow till 26 July 1675. He had joined the church of Rome, and, in accordance with an order of the House of Lords for the ejection of Roman catholics, was summoned to attend a meeting of the College of Physicians on 14 April 1679. He did so, but the feeling of the college was against intolerant proceedings; a quorum was not present, and no steps were taken. He attained considerable practice, and [q. v.], who had met him in consultation, found his ‘genius disposed for the practice of physick’ (Works, ed. Pechey, 1729, p. 339), and praises both his learning and sagacity. Sydenham prefixed to ‘A Treatise of the Gout and Dropsy’ a letter to Short in which occurs a famous passage on posthumous fame which Fielding quoted in ‘Tom Jones.’ Short died on 28 Sept. 1685, and is buried in St. James's Chapel, London. Bishop Burnet, who thought that Charles II died of poison, also believed that Short was poisoned by his co-religionists for asserting that the king was poisoned (Own Time, i. 609). (1631–1691) [q. v.] and [q. v.] seem to have been unable to resist an opportunity of imposing upon the whig historian's credulity.

 SHORT, THOMAS (1690?–1772), physician, was born about 1690 in the south of Scotland, and, after graduating in medicine, settled in practice at Sheffield. In 1713 one William Steel communicated to him the secret of making cerated glass of antimony a cure for dysentery, which he afterwards published. He made several journeys to visit the mineral springs of Yorkshire and of other parts of England. He published in 1725 ‘A Rational Discourse on the Inward Uses of Water,’ and in 1730 ‘A Dissertation upon Tea.’ In 1750 he published ‘New Observations on the Bills of Mortality,’ in which he adds something to the remarks of Graunt and Sir [q. v.], and treats the whole subject in relation to a book published anonymously by him the year before, ‘A General Chronological History of the Air,’ in two volumes, dedicated to Dr. Mead. He spent eighteen years on these works. In 1750 he also issued ‘Discourses on Tea, Sugar, Milk, made Wines, Spirits, Punch, Tobacco,’ &c., and in 1751 ‘Medicina Britannica,’ an interesting and lucid herbal for the use of general readers. His ‘Treatise on the different Sorts of cold Mineral Waters in England’ appeared in 1766, and is an original work showing careful obser-