At his death his vast collection of botanical specimens, in the formation of which he took such delight, and to which he had devoted so great a portion of his life, was bequeathed to the Smithsonian Institution at Washington, but there was no appropriate place there in which to display so large a collection. It is now in possession of the Academy of Natural Sciences at Philadelphia. During his life no less than five of the distinguished botanists of the age honored his name by attaching it to six new genera and species of plants.
DOCTOR CHARLES WILKINS SHORT.
His lectures to the medical students on Materia Medica and Medical Botany he always read from his manuscript, which detracted somewhat from his impressiveness. He was too modest to trust himself to oral discourses.[56] Yet his pupils were always closely attentive and respectful, holding him and his teachings in high esteem.[57]
He was Dean of the Medical Faculty in Transylvania for about ten years.
For some years he was co-editor of the Transylvania Journal of Medicine with Doctor Cooke. This quarterly they founded in Lexington in 1828.
Doctor Short severed his connection with the Transylvania Medical School in 1838 to be allied with Doctors Caldwell, Cooke, and Yandell in the Medical Institute of Louisville,[58] in which he remained until 1849, when his colleagues elected him Emeritus Professor of Materia Medica and Botany. He died at his beautiful country residence, "Hayfield," near Louisville, on March 7, 1863, aged sixty-nine years.
Doctor Short's father was Peyton Short, who came to Kentucky from Surry County, Virginia, and whose mother was Elizabeth, daughter of Sir William Skipwith, Baronet. His mother was Mary, daughter of John Cleves Symmes, formerly of Long Island, who filled various offices of honor and trust in Cincinnati. His sister was the wife of Doctor Benjamin Winslow Dudley. His brother was the late Judge John Cleves Short, of North Bend, Ohio. He married Mary Henry Churchill, only daughter of Armistead and Jane Henry Churchill. Of his six children—one son and five daughters—all were prosperous in life.
The early education of Doctor Short was in the school of the celebrated Joshua Fry, and, in 1810, he graduated with honor in the Academical Department of Transylvania University, beginning soon afterward the study of medicine with his uncle, Professor Frederick Ridgely. He repaired to Philadelphia in 1813 and became a private pupil of Doctor Casper Wistar, Professor of Anatomy in the University of Pennsylvania, in which university Doctor Short received the degree of Doctor of Medicine in the spring of 1815, returning shortly after to Kentucky. Doctor Short was a consistent member of the Presbyterian church.[59]