David Somerset Short

Short abstract

Cardiologist who gave one of the earliest descriptions of the sick sinus syndrome and who fostered the spiritual life in hospitals

As well as carrying out seminal clinical research, the cardiologist David Short was remarkable for the strongly pastoral element he brought to patient care. A deeply committed Christian, and for many years a church elder, he jointly began weekly church services in Aberdeen Royal Infirmary and Woodend Hospital in 1964. On Sunday afternoons he could often be seen wheeling patients down hospital corridors to services as well as leading worship and preaching.

Figure 1.

David's interest in fostering the spiritual life in hospitals ensured that the newest wing of Aberdeen Royal Infirmary had a 90 seat chapel included in its construction plan, where none had previously been considered. He was chairman of the executive committee, and later president, of the Christian Medical Fellowship. His quiet but fervent desire to impart and communicate Christian values was reflected in a number of publications: Medicine as a Vocation (1978), Real Success (1998), The Bedside Book (2003), and Pastoral Visitation (co-written, 2004). A paper, “Body, Mind—and Spirit” was published in the Scottish Medical Journal in February 2005.

Born in Weston super Mare in 1918 into a family with a strong medical and Christian tradition, David won a Royal College of Surgeons scholarship to Clare College, Cambridge, and completed clinical studies at Bristol Medical School in 1942, where he gained the Gold Medal. He set aside his pacifist views to join the Royal Army Medical Corps as a lieutenant, later captain, serving in India and Burma from 1944 to 1947. During the Burma campaign, he decided to move forward with a frontline combat group, where he came under fire. His commanding officer was not pleased and admonished him for risking reducing the number of doctors available to treat casualties.

Following demobilisation, he worked at Southmead Hospital, Bristol, and was then appointed to junior hospital posts at the National Heart Hospital, Royal London Hospital, and Middlesex Hospital, London. David had already completed his MD during military service, and he added a PhD with seminal research on pulmonary hypertension, describing the abnormal structure of pulmonary arterioles in this disease. Later he gave one of the earliest descriptions of the cardiac arrhythmia that later came to be called the sick sinus syndrome.

After 11 years in the senior registrar wilderness, he was appointed in 1960 at age 41 as consultant physician in Aberdeen, where he was an occasional source of irritation to some consultant colleagues, on one occasion publicly opposing a salary rise. Near to retirement he acquired a small motorised caravan, which he parked at the entrance to Aberdeen Royal Infirmary, despite criticism that this lowered the tone of the consultant car park, then populated by Saabs and Audis.

David Short was appointed as physician to the Queen in Scotland in 1977, and became professor of clinical medicine in the University of Aberdeen in 1983. He began what we now know as continuing medical education as early as 1961, initiated clinical audit meetings for physicians, and from 1982 to 1985, past his retirement, was chairman of the research ethical committee, University of Aberdeen and Grampian Health Board. Following retirement he was president of the Aberdeen Medico-Chirurgical Society, chairman of the medical and scientific advisory committee to pro-life members of parliament at Westminster, and chairman of the Board of Ethics in Medicine in London.

David was diagnosed as having acute myeloid leukaemia in January 2005. He decided that he would not receive chemotherapy and commented to several visitors with a twinkle in his eye that there were two really good things about his diagnosis: firstly, that he would not die from Alzheimer's disease and, secondly, that he could now have as much butter and cream as he wished. He methodically planned the details of his funeral and had nearly finished dictating his memoirs at the end of April when pneumonia caused rapid decline.

He leaves a wife, Joan; five children; and 13 grandchildren.

David Somerset Short, former consultant physician (cardiologist) and emeritus professor of clinical medicine Aberdeen (b Weston super Mare 1918; q Cambridge/Bristol 1942; MD, PhD, FRCP, FRCP Ed), died from acute myeloid leukaemia on 4 May 2005.