Addison and the white corpuscles : an aspect of nineteenth-century biology / L. J. Rather.

  • Rather, L. J.
Date:
1972 [i.e. 1971]
Catalogue details

Licence: Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0)

Credit: Addison and the white corpuscles : an aspect of nineteenth-century biology / L. J. Rather. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    Introduction William Addison (i 802—1881) was a medical practitioner of Malvern, physician to the Duchess of Kent and a Fellow of the Royal Society, a man whose publications on inflam mation and nutrition made his name a familiar one in medical circles in the eighteen forties, both in England and abroad. His views on these subjects were in some ways novel and in others outmoded, but in both instances they clashed with the ruling dogmas of the time and were rejected, often harshly, by most of his contemporaries. Addison never occupied an academic position, but that he was by no means an outsider or mere eccentric is probably evident enough from his connexion with the Royal Society alone. Although the work that made his name familiar in England and on the continent was almost entirely done in the eighteen forties he was sufficiently well regarded a decade or so later to be given a Gulstonian Lectureship. According to his obituarist, Addison was compelled by reasons of ill-health to give up medical practice at an early age and retire to Brighton. It appears that Addison was to a certain extent a forgotten man in his later years. He is today at times confused with Thomas Addison (1793—1860), the great clinician of Guy's Hospital in London. Indeed, if we are to believe his obituarist, it was always true that he lived to some extent under the shadow of his greater (in the eyes of most) contemporary. 1 Before giving the grounds for the survival of William Addison's name after his death it will be necessary to make a few preliminary remarks concerning the concept of in flammation, for it is within this context that such fame as he now has was achieved. Since the sixteenth century the word ' inflammation ', or its cognates in other languages, has been in use as a technical term among Western physicians. 2 The concept of inflammation, on the other hand, has a much