Letter 4475

Short was recently abroad examining mineral waters. He has sent samples to the Royal Society, but is hesitant to reveal too much to its members because ‘there are always some indigent creatures attending the meeting of the Society, which are for picking up anything that will afford matter if publication for a bit of Bread’. Short discusses his researches and thanks Sloane for sending the Philosophical Transactions. Thomas Short was a Scottish physician who settled in Sheffield. He traveled throughout England examining the medical effects of mineral waters and published works promoting their use in 1725 and 1766 (Norman Moore, Short, Thomas (c.16901772), rev. Patrick Wallis, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/25461, accessed 24 July 2013]).