He died of syphilis.
His work with sex linked traits in fruit flys Drosophila suggested that chromosomes contained genes. Later Nettie Maria Stephens was able to prove this hypothesis by examining the chromosomes of the fruit flys. Bridges wrote a couple of papers presenting the proof. He thanked her as "Miss Stevens" without stating what her contribution was nor refering to her PhD.
wikipedia.org dumped 2003-03-17 with terodump