John Shortt

John Shortt MD, MRCPL
File:Shortt, John.jpg
Born	1822
Died	1889
Residence	Madras Presidency [Chingleput Madras] [1862] Zillah Surgeon, Madras [1867] c/o Messrs Spartali, Gresham House, Ec [1868] Madras Presidency [1869] Deputy Surgeon-General, The Retreat, Ercaus, Madras Presidency [1883]
Occupation	armed services medical
Society Membership membership ESL, ASL, AI Ordinary Fellow ASL local secretary for Madras AI Corresponding Member ASL Foundation Fellow left 1877.03.27 resigned elected_ESL 1862.04.01 elected_AI 1863 elected_ASL 1863 societies Royal College of Physicians Royal College of Surgeons

Notes

House Notes

Surgeon HM Madras Army, Superintendant General of Vaccination [Zillah Surgeon 1867]
Inspector General of Vaccination, Madras [A6:2]
1870.03.15 A letter from Dr Shortt was read resigning his Local Secretaryship for Madras, and the Secretary was instructed to communicate with Dr Shortt for further explanation.

15 crania presented to ASL museum in 1868

1874.10.27 A proposal by Dr John Shortt that the subscription for Members residing in India be reduced to one guinea annually was referred to the Finance Committee

1875.05.25 It was resolved that the Hindu skeleton presented to the Museum by Dr Shortt be re-articulated and placed in a case similar to that holding the Tasmanian skeleton.
1877.03.27 On the proposal of Mr Brabrook it was determined to appoint Dr Shortt a Corresponding Member of the Institute

Notes From Elsewhere

Dr. John Shortt of the Madras Medical Services in the 19th Century. He could well have been one of the Madras Medical School’s first students when it was founded in 1835 with ten East Indians, as Anglo-Indians were then known, to be trained as apothecaries and 11 Indians to be trained as dressers, both, however, being additionally trained in diagnostic and aftercare skills. Among the four-member staff to train them, headed by Surgeon Mortimer, was Apothecary D’Beaux, an East Indian, and P. Muthuswami Mudaliar, but where they were trained I have not been able to trace. It was possibly this team that trained John Shortt.
To cut a long story to Shortt, he joined the East India Company’s services as an Assistant Apothecary. He must have been something exceptional even then, for he was selected to go to Edinburgh to study further. There he got an MD degree before returning to India to join the Madras Medical Services in 1854. In the Service, he served with the rank Surgeon-Major. When he retired 25 years later, he was serving in the rank of Colonel and, more importantly, as the Deputy Surgeon-General of the Madras Presidency, quite an achievement in those days for an East Indian.
Like many Government officials in those days, Shortt too spent much time on a variety of interests which got them wider recognition. His interests were botany, biology and anthropology. His published works included a paper on the Indigo plant in 1860, an anthropological study of the Todas, and a paper on the coffee plant. His paper on Indigo, written when he was Zillah (District) Surgeon, Chingleput, was published by ‘Pharoah and Co’. It was a publication noteworthy for its two-column page format featuring the English text in the left column and the “Hindustani translation” in Urdu script on the right. Shortt also practised as a veterinary surgeon after his retirement in Yercaud till his death. Out of his experiences of those years came a book titled A Manual Of Indian Cattle And Sheep: Their Breeds, Management And Diseases published by Higginbotham’s.
His work in biology was responsible for Shortt being invited to be a Fellow of the Linnean Society, London. He was later to propose Dr. Senjee Pulney Andy (Miscellany, August 26, 2013) for a Fellowship of the Society. Both of them independently wrote articles on the branching palms in South India that were published in 1869 in two different journals of the Linnean Society. Both also wrote on the Palmyrah and other flora in the journals of the Madras Agri-Horticultural Society. Shortt, who in the early 1870s, was listed as the Superintendent-General of Vaccination, was probably Pulney Andy’s boss, the latter serving as the Superintendent of Vaccination, Malabar, at the time. Shortt was also during this period the Secretary of the Obstetrical Society of Madras. He passed away in Yercaud on April 24, 1889.

Publications

External Publications

His published works included a paper on the Indigo plant in 1860, an anthropological study of the Todas, and a paper on the coffee plant. His paper on Indigo, written when he was Zillah (District) Surgeon, Chingleput, was published by ‘Pharoah and Co’. It was a publication noteworthy for its two-column page format featuring the English text in the left column and the “Hindustani translation” in Urdu script on the right

A Manual Of Indian Cattle And Sheep: Their Breeds, Management And Diseases published by Higginbotham’s

wrote articles on the branching palms in South India

also wrote on the Palmyrah and other flora

House Publications

ESL
Weight & size of Europeans and Asiatics
A brief account of the Yenadies of the Chingleput district
On rude tribes in Southern India
The account of a religious festival comprising leaf wearing and the hanging or cheddal
The fisher men of Southern India
On the hill tribes of the Neilgherries
ASL
On the Domber. (Read March 15.)
on the aborigines of Southern India AND on the leaf-wearing tribe of India Read 14 feb 1865
Bayaderes of India
on the Kojaks of Southern India

AI
on three microcephales of India - accepted for reading in extensor then printed
on the Kojahs of Southern India - 1872.12.17

Related Material Details

Other Material

Photos in Anthropological Society Album at PRM