Here is an exerpt from that latter book:
"And now, Sir, before I address myself to my proper
subject - Dr Addison`s discovery - permit me to say a
few words respecting Dr. Addison himself; for it seems
to me that to show, though of necessity but briefly,
from what, and how,
"Dr Addison belonged to that class of men, so numerous in this country, who, by their abilities and energy, have raised themselves from the lower ranks of society to the more exalted positions in their respective callings. He was born in the autumn of 1795, at Long Benton, a small rural village in Northumberland, situated about three-and-a-half miles from Newcastle-on-Tyne. His father was a grocer and flour-dealer; but, though of humble station, he must have been a man of enlarged views, for he not only gave his son the best elementary education within his reach, but he aspired to start him in life on a much higher social level than his own. Dr. Addison himself told me that his father had designed him for the law, but that personal predilections had induced him to embrace the profession of medicine.
"Addison was first sent, with his brother, to a school kept in
a roadside cottage by one
"Fortunately, his father had the means, as well as the desire,
to afford his son every possible advantage for acquiring
a knowledge of his profession. The opening out of collieries
in the parish had largely increased his custom among the
pit-folk of the neighbourhood, and he had become rich for
his station. Addison, therefore, after passing through the
necessary curriculum of medical study in Edinburgh, and
taking the degree of M.D., was enabled to come to London,
where he first became house-surgeon to the Lock Hospital,
and subsequently physician to the Carey Street Dispensary,
and also, I believe, to the Royal Infirmary for Children
and Women in Waterloo Road.
Soon after his arrival in
London he had entered himself as a pupil at Guy`s Hospital,
and, in a comparatively short space of time, he was raised
to be a member of the medical staff of that institution.
In this position he speedily made for himself a great
reputation as a practical physician and clinical teacher.
"The wide experience acquired in such various fields of
study, together with his own great natural powers of
observation, sufficiently explain the apparently intuitive
knowledge of disease, and almost unrivalled powers of
diagnosis, which formed the basis of Addison`s great
and real success in professional life. For his success was real.
It was not small, if estimated in the lower sense of
pecuniary results; but, if estimated in the far higher sense
by achievement and reputation, his success was great indeed,
and such as only a favoured few can hope to equal. In some
subjects he was far in advance of his day. Pathological
truths which he enunciated thirty years ago, with respect
to diseases of the lungs, have only recently won their
way to general acceptance. The discovery with which his name
will ever be associated was published to the medical world
nearly twenty years ago, and has not yet been generally
accepted, nor even generally understood.
"Dr. Addison died at Brighton in June 1860, and was
interred at Lanercost Abbey, in Cumberland, from
whence his family had originally sprung, and where
his paternal grandfather had been a respected
yeoman. I trust, Sir, that this slight sketch of
the life and labours of one of the most eminent
members of our body will not be deemed an unsuitable
prelude to lectures which are expressly devoted to
the elucidation of his most famous work.
"Dr. Addison had been for nearly thirty years on the
medical staff of Guy`s Hospital when he discovered
the existence of the disease to which Trousseau,
if I mistake not, was the first to apply the name
of `Addison`s Disease.` To quote his own words,
he had,`for a long period
met with a very remarkable form of general anaemia, occurring
without any discoverable cause whatsoever........."
According to Pallister reports that the older brother John was born on 13th April 1794, and that Thomas himself was baptised on October 11 1795.
Here is the chapter entitled "BIOGRAPHY"
from A collection of the Published Writings
of the Late Thomas Addison, M.D., by
"The records of Addison`s early life are so difficult of ascertainment that any account of his actual life, in reference to the object of these papers, must date from the commencement of his association with Guy`s Hospital about the year 1819 or 1820. That must have been nearly the period at which he attached himself to the hospital, where his enterprising and spirited activity in the search after a definite explanation of every form of disease presented to his observation, attracted the attention of the observant and large-minded treasurer; who was then by common acknowledgement the great administrative benefactor, and, through the appreciation of his minute, vigorous, and just guidance of its business from the smallest details to the highest principles involved in its government, the accepted dictator of the affairs of the institution. It was not easy in those days to overcome the prevailing ingrained prejudice that unless a man has been originally a pupil of the hospital he was not fairly eligible to the duties of its offices. Addison`s may be cited, indeed, as one of the earliest (if not the first) instances of those traditional trammels being broken through; for in 1824 he was appointed assistant-physician to the hospital, his previous association with it consisting only in his entry there as a student after having taken his degree in Edinburgh.
"It cannot be doubted that
"There is always an interest attaching to the history of any man who has made a prominent position for himself in whatever career of life; the question "how he did it" excites the interest of the younger members of any profession in which it has been achieved. In the instance of Addison the old answer must be given - he "did it" by indomitable perseverance in the pursuit of one object of study; making it, as it were, the one day-dream and night-dream of his existence.
"He seems to have been born to humble parents as Long Benton, near Newcastle, about 1793, to have been sent to the village school there, and afterwards to the Grammar School at Newcastle. Thence he migrated to Edinburgh, where he graduated M.D. in 1815, selecting for the subject of his inaugural thesis "De Siphilide."(DISSERTATIO MEDICA INAUGURALIS QUAEDAM DE SYPHILIDE ET HYDRARGYRO COMPLECTENS, in Wellcome Library, London - Wehner)
"His familiarity with Latin was at this time exemplified by a habit of taking down lecture-notes in that language; and this mental peculiarity may have led to his habitual exactitude of diction in whatever he wrote or spoke in after life.
"On his arrival in London, he took up his residence at Skinner Street, Snow Hill, in one of the so-called "haunted houses" (possibly from some association with the Cock Lane ghost story of Dr. Johnson), and was soon after appointed house-surgeon to the Lock Hospital, where he acquired so great an interest in the subject of syphilis, that, although a topic not in strict accord with the branch of the profession which he had adopted, he always spoke on it authoritatively.
"The next step in his career which we can gather is his residence
in Hatton Garden, and his attachment to the General Dispensary.
At this time he studied with the celebrated
"In the year 1837 he received the appointment of physician to the hospital, and was at the same time selected as the colleague of the late Dr. Bright in the duties of the chair of Medicine.
"At this period he commenced, conjointly with his colleague, a work on `Medicine.` From the high estimation in which this work was held it must be a matter of regret that one volume only was published. Now that both these widely-known authors have departed from their labours, it cannot be harmful to assert (what was then generally known) that the greater portion of the work was from the pen of Dr. Addison.
"He had now achieved the desired position for that development, or rather the showing forth, of the qualities which he had cultivated with so much care; those of the eminently practical physician. And he certainly exhibited them in a remarkable degree; his strong, positive, and perpetual insistance upon the term "practical", in reference to disease, constitutes, indeed, the key to Addison`s character and professional career. He was always ready to discuss newly-started theories, but he never, for a moment, allowed them to interfere with the results of his matured experience. Possessing unusually vigorous perceptive powers, being shrewd and sagacious beyond the average of men, the patient before him was scanned with a penetrating glance from which few diseases could escape detection. He never reasoned from a half-discovered fact, but would remain at the bedside, with a dogged determination to track out the disease to its very source for a period which constantly wearied his class and his attendant friends.
"So severely did he tax his mind with the minutest details
bearing upon an exact exposition of the case, that he has
been known to startle the sister of the ward in the middle
of the night by his presence; after going to bed with the
case present in his mind, some point of what he considered
important detail in reference to it occurred to him, and he
could not rest until he had cleared it up. He had also been
known after seeing a patient within the radius of eight or
ten miles to have remembered on his near approach to London,
thinking over the case on the way, that he had omitted some
seemingly important inquiry, and to have posted back some
miles for the purpose of satisfying his mind on the doubt
which had occurred to it, If at last he could lay his finger
on the disease, his victory was attained, and his painstaking
satisfactorily rewarded. For with him accurate "diagnosis"
was the great, and too often the ultimate, object of
an industry of search, a correlation of facts deduced from
scientific observation, and a concentration of thought
rarely combined in the individual physician. To those who
knew him best his power of searching into the complex
framework of the body, and dragging the hidden malady to
light, appeared unrivalled; but we fear the one
great object being accomplished, the same enegetic power
was not devoted to its alleviation or cure. Without
accusing Addison of a meditated neglect of therapeutics,
we fancy that we can trace the dallying with remedies
which has been the characteristic of more recent times.
"I have worked out the disease; if it be remediable,
Nature, with fair play, will remedy it. I do not
clearly see my way to the direct agency of special
medicaments, but I must prescribe something for the patient,
at least, to satisfy his or her friends," seems to have
been a part of the habit of mind which can deal satisfactorily
only with the "observable and proven," and shrinks
from the "uncertain and questionable."
"His discovery of the heretofore unsuspected disease of the
supra-renal capsules was the result of an exhaustive analysis
of every organ of the body, without elucidating any evident
reason for a remarkable form of anæmia: for a time he was
constrained to the expression "idiopathic anæmia,"
accompanied by a prognosis of its fatal issue. This prognosis
was so constantly verified that, following up the doctrine of
exclusion, he at last, in the absence of any other noticeable
cause for it, observed an association between it and a
peculiar appearance of the supra-renal capsules. Here we trace
the advantage of the large study of clinical facts;
at that time skin disease was supposed to be confined to the
province of the surgeon, and it is probable that but for Addison`s
accurate observation of the various cutaneous deviation from its
ordinary and healthy condition, the bronzed skin would not have
rivetted his attention so forcibly as to have incited him to
prosecute his inquiries to their ultimate issue.
"We recognise the necessity for some brief remarks on Addison`s
disposition from the conviction that it was not generally
understood. Viewed in its professional aspect, no character on
record has presented in a higher degree the sterling hard
qualities of true professional honesty. We have never heard a
single instance in which a word of disparagement against a
professional brother escaped him. He would always strenuously
and with all his natural vigour maintain what he believed to be
the truth, but never for the purpose of underrating the opinions
of others. His whole bearing in the profession was to the last
degree honorable, and anything like jealousy or ill-will against
another professional man never entered his mind.
"The admirable bust by
"He was for many years acknowledged as the spirit which influenced the medical doings at Guy`s Hospital, and to Addison is due, in great measure, the prominent character which the medical department of that institution has of late years held in public professional estimation.
"Yet in professional intercourse his disposition presented peculiarities often misrepresented by the professional observer; he, the observer, saw what appeared to him a rudeness, a certain bluntness of expression conveying to him the idea of a haughtiness, or at least of Addison`s assumption of superiority; so that he parted with him impressed with the dignity of his bearing, a full appreciation of the accurate and well-sifted opinion which he had obtained, but at the same time carrying with him the notion that, judging from his apparently unapproachable manner, and what seemed to many "hauteur," he was a man of large self-esteem. This is one of the commonest mistakes in the estimation of character. In what degree a resoluteness of expression and an undue energy of manner is unconsciously adopted to cloak a covert physical nervousness, no one but the wearer of the cloak can fully estimate. We have reason to know that Addison suffered most accutely from this physical enervation; he has even said, "I never rose to address the Guy`s Junior Physical Society without feeling nervous," and yet his listeners would depart with the feeling that he had spoken to them in what may almost be termed a tone of "bluster;" they went away impressed with the dignity of his bearing, and credited him with great physical and moral energy; not recognising that a quick, hasty, and impassioned manner of expression is not infrequently the result of a deficient controlling power. We know that his mind was to the last degree susceptible, and that although wearing the outward garb of resolution, he was, beyond most other men, most liable to sink under trial. We lay some stress upon this peculiarity for the purpose of vindicating his character from the unamiable spirit which we have heard sometimes laid to his charge. If there be any of our readers who may have been vexed by the apparent discourteousness of his manner, let them carefully consider the explanation of it which we have attempted to depict, and give thanks to God that they have been blessed with a calmer and less perturbable spirit.
"His last communication addressed to the pupils of the hospital in answer to a letter of condolence written to him on his retirement from the hospital on account of his ill-health conveys most markedly the seemingly latent kindliness of his nature, his entire devotion to whatever would aid to place medicine on a more scientific basis, his affectionate regard for those of his juniors who were fellow-helpers in the work, and his own powerful style of expressing what he sincerely and heartily felt.
"March 17th, 1860.
"MY DEAR SIR,
"A considerable breakdown in my health has scared me from the anxieties, responsibilities, and excitement of the profession; whether temporarily or permanently cannot yet be determined; but, whatever may be the issue, be assured that nothing was better calculated to soothe me than the kind interest manifested by the pupils of Guy`s Hospital during the many trying years devoted to that institution.
"I can truly affirm that I ever found my best support and encouragement in the generous gratitude and affectionate attachment, as well as my proudest reflections, in the honourable and most exemplary conduct of its pupils. Present my sincere regards and best wishes to every one of them, and believe me,
"Yours truly and affectionately,
"THOMAS ADDISON."
"
In the book "Thomas Addison, M.D., F.R.C.P. 1794-1860"
by
"The Addisons had their first son John in April 1794, the Squarey
Clapps (his parish priest, the
It goes on to say that that Thomas went to the Royal Free Grammar School
in Newcastle (founded by Aselak of Killingworth in the 12th century)
for the Michaelmas term in 1806. He was one of 130 pupils under the
John Fife - a school contemporary - founded the Eye Infirmary with T. M. Greenhow.
Thomas Addison married
"Another event in the last years of his life must also have given
him great satisfaction. He was called upon to make a professional
visit to one of the 
Here is an extract from page 30:
"He departed to London the next morning for what proved to be
his last session at Guy`s Hospital. During the winter of 1859-1860
he developed some disease of the brain and had to retire from his
hospital duties. He left his new house in Berkely Square and
went to Brighton for the sea air. He had been greatly upset by
the death of a colleague and close friend,
I am indebted to
In those letters, sent in reply to a circular
from
It seems that
H9/GY/A150/5 states "
Thomas Addison replied to the Treasurer (H9/GY/A150/3),
but I found the hand impossible to read (typical doctor).
He did praise the work of
Elspeth Stanford says that Addison had married Catherine Hauxwell, a widow with two children. They moved to 51 Berkley square, and then the family went on holiday to 15 Wellington Villas to try to clear Addison`s depression.
The wife and stepson
Stanford believed Addison suffered from cancer of the pancreas because he had gallstones and jaundice, but also because of his aversion to food. As evidence she states that the bell went for dinner at 2 o`clock p.m., and he committed suicide. Some aversion - rather death than dinner.
This seems rather apocryphal, like the "Addisonians` craving for salt". Sufferers from Addison`s disease also lose their appetite, but they don`t take it that personally. Only a sufferer from pancreatic cancer will know if this story is credible. Stanford quotes the inquest on Friday, June 29, 1860 when she says that the bodyguards said that Addison had repeatedly tried to kill himself whilst in their charge.
She says that the inquest declared the incident to be an accident although the Brighton newspaper described it as suicide.
For the following extract from the Brighton Herald of the
30th June 1860 (AMS 6373/9, Page 3 column 7), I am indebted to
"Dr Addison, formerly a physician to Guy`s Hospital, committed suicide by jumping down the area (i.e. the space between the front of the house and the street) of 15 Wellington Villas, where he had for some time been residing, under the care of two attendants, having before attempted self-destruction. He was 72 years of age (sic), and laboured under the form of insanity called melancholia, resulting from overwork of the brain. He was walking in the garden with his attendants, when he was summoned in to dinner. He made as if towards the front door, but suddenly threw himself over a dwarf-wall into the area - a distance of nine feet - and, falling on his head, the frontal bone was fractured, and death resulted at one o`clock yesterday morning"
Mr. Bye goes on to say that the will of Thomas Addison, formerly of 24 New Street, Spring Gardens but late of 51 Berkley Square, Middlesex and of 15 Wellington Villas, Brighton was proved by his brother John Addison of Bank`s House, Cumberland on 4th October 1860, when the estate was valued at less than 30,000 Pounds (but not inconsiderable in those days).