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David S Short, 1918-2005

Obituary

David Short came from a family with a strong medical and Christian tradition. His father, Latimer, was a public health physician and his more famous uncle was Arthur Rendle-Short, Professor of Surgery at Bristol University. His two younger brothers also became doctors.

He was educated at Bristol Grammar School and Clare College, Cambridge, where he graduated in the midst of war in 1942, and gained the Gold Medal at Bristol Medical School where he completed his clinical studies. During the periods of jungle warfare, while serving in Burma in WWII, absolute quiet was maintained at night to avoid the British Fourteenth Army positions being identified, and in the silence of his trench under a thick blanket he taught himself New Testament Greek by torchlight.

Following demobilisation he returned to work in Bristol, and then had various hospital posts in London. In 1960 he was appointed Consultant Physician in Aberdeen and started weekly postgraduate teaching in 1961. In 1977 he was appointed Physician to HM The Queen in Scotland, formalising a summer on-call commitment that he had accepted for several years.

David was a deeply committed Christian with an active personal faith and was an elder for many years of a local independent church, preaching regularly. He sought to integrate medicine and his Christian faith wherever possible, and from 1964, as joint originator of weekly church services in Aberdeen Royal Infirmary and Woodend General Hospital, could be seen propelling wheelchair bound patients down hospital corridors to services as well as taking an active role in leading worship and preaching. Always an approachable man, he had a deep sense of the equal value of all human beings before God and at his church he was frequently found alongside any homeless people who came to services.

David enjoyed watching cricket, listening to music, and spending time with his family, although time for the latter was greatly limited during much of his active medical career. He faced the end of his life with quiet assurance in the grace of the God in whom he had placed his trust all his life. On the morning of May 4, distressed by breathlessness, he still remembered that his granddaughter, Ruth, had an important school examination and asked a family member at his bedside to pray for her, keeping the habit of a lifetime to pray daily for his extended family. He died later that evening.

David Short was one of very few doctors who manage to combine superb clinical skills, active research throughout a career, compassion for his patients and real interest in his staff, a very active personal faith and strong family interest and loyalty. He was a wonderful role model. But his own estimate of himself is summed up by the epitaph he has chosen for his grave: ‘A sinner saved by grace’.

Dr. M.E. Jones