Thomas Addison

Encyclopedia of World Biography on Thomas Addison

The English physician Thomas Addison (1793-1860), one of a famous group of physicians at Guy's Hospital, London, was the first to describe a disease of the endocrine glands and the type of anemia now known as Addison's disease.
Thomas Addison was born in April 1793 at Long Benton near Newcastle-upon-Tyne. His father, Joseph Addison, was a grocer and flour dealer. Addison studied medicine at the University of Edinburgh and took his doctorate in medicine in 1815. He then held various posts in London hospitals, and in 1819 he was admitted a licentiate of the Royal College of Physicians of London. Although now a fully qualified physician, he entered as a student at Guy's Hospital about 1820. In 1824 he was appointed assistant physician to that hospital and in 1837 full physician. An acute clinical observer and a brilliant teacher, he did much to create the fame of the medical school at Guy's. 

Addison's medical writings were not numerous but very important. In 1829, in collaboration with John Morgan, he published the first work on toxicology in English. Much of his work--including his important observations on pneumonia, pulmonary tuberculosis, and fatty liver--appeared in the Guy's Hospital Reports. He gave the first description of appendicitis in his and Richard Bright's The Elements of the Practice of Medicine (vol. 1, 1839), most of which was written by Addison.
In 1849 Addison read to a London medical society a paper on anemia with disease of the suprarenal bodies. This type of anemia was unlike the anemias then known (it was always fatal) and at autopsy Addison had sometimes found disease of the suprarenals. The paper passed unnoticed. After further investigation Addison published in 1855 his classic work On the Constitutional and Local Effects of Disease of the Supra-renal Capsules, in which he described Addisonian (pernicious) anemia and Addison's disease.