Thomas Addison

Thomas Addison (April 179529 June 1860) was an English physician and medical researcher. He is traditionally regarded as one of the "great men" of Guy's Hospital in London. Thomas Addison began his career at Guy's Hospital in 1817, eventually becoming a full physician in 1837. He was a noted and respected lecturer and diagnostician. He experienced episodes of mental depression throughout his life, culminating in his suicide in 1860. Addison's legacy includes the description of conditions such as Addison's disease (a degenerative disease of the adrenal glands), and pernicious anemia, a hematological disorder later found to be caused by failure to absorb vitamin B12. Early years He was born in April 1795 in Long Benton, then near Newcastle upon Tyne, the son of Joseph Addison, who was a grocer and flour dealer there. His father's family was Cumbrian, and Thomas was attached to the family house at Banks near Lanercost, as his personal background. Joseph Addison had married Sarah Shaw, and gone into the Shaw family business.