“His strong, positive, and perpetual insistence 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 the exact exposition of a 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 to his mind, some point of what he considered important detail in reference to it occurred to him, and he could not rest till he had cleared it up. He has 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 his 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 that the one great object being accomplished, the same energetic 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.”
Addison did not seek to push himself into notoriety. Indeed he seems to have studiously kept himself in the background as regards public life. He took little pains to seek publication of his researches in the medical journals, and for the most part his excellent papers appear in Guy’s Hospital Reports. Thus his practice was not equal to his great merits, though he died worth £60,000. In professional intercourse he appeared blunt, and even at times rude, giving the idea of hauteur and assumption of superiority. The general practitioner was liable to find him unapproachable, and to conceive of him as a man of large self-esteem. Yet underneath this outward semblance lay a most acute nervousness of temperament. This powerful, well-built, energetic, emphatic man concealed a physical nervousness and susceptibility which most deeply affected him in circumstances of trial. He often said, “I never rose to address the Guy’s Junior Physical Society without feeling nervous;” and yet at the same time he appeared to his audience to be speaking in a tone akin even to bluster. His apparent discourtesy was as far as possible from representing his real sentiments. “Viewed in its professional aspect,” says Dr. Wilks, “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 of 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 honourable, and anything like jealousy or ill-will against another professional man never entered his mind.”
The chief honour outside his school that fell to Addison was the Presidency of the Royal Medical and Chirurgical Society. But court favour did not shine on him, though none would have more worthily received it. On the Continent, as we have before said, Addison was treated with the utmost distinction. When he visited Paris, Nélaton, Trousseau and the élite of the profession entertained him at a public dinner, and gave him the warmest reception. Addison made an eloquent speech in excellent French. He was a zealous Tory, not approving of Disraeli’s modernised policy, but equally removed from Eldon’s tyrannical rule.
Guy’s Museum of Pathology, adorned by an admirable bust of him by Joseph Towne, bears large testimony to Addison’s energy and discernment. He added to it very largely, and his early study of skin diseases led him to suggest and superintend in execution a plan for illustrating skin diseases by wax models, and carefully coloured drawings from life—a process afterwards extended widely through the range of pathology.
“Every feature of Addison’s face,” says Dr. Lonsdale, “was well defined, and comported well with his finely-proportioned massive head. He had dark hair, large eyebrows, and eyes of deep hazel colour; his nose was pronounced, his lips full and voluble, and rather special in action, and his chin firm and broad; and his general physiognomy was stamped with vigour and unmistakable character throughout. He had a deep penetrating eye, that became full of life and light when engaged in debate. Of commanding presence and firm significant step, he possessed a keen penetrativeness, indeed a special discernment that never failed him in private life, and but rarely at the bedside of the sick. He stood before you the impersonation of power and dignity and independence.” Some persons who knew him well believed that he would have had equal success at the bar, in the senate, in the navy or the Church. Whatever he attempted, he would have mastered, and would have carried out, undisturbed by opposition, undeviating in principle.
Dr. Addison did not marry till he was some years over fifty. His wife was the widow of W. W. Hanxwell, Esq. The wedding, in September 1847, took place in Lanercost Church, and was attended by an unusual incident. Just before the ceremony, and unknown to the party, a storm had blown part of the roof of the church on to the altar table. When he saw the wreckage, Addison exclaimed to his biographer, nervously clutching his arm, “Good God, Lonsdale! is this not ominous?” But his friend, suggesting that any part of the building would do for the ceremony, and the bride smilingly showing no diminution of cheerfulness, reassured the doctor, and all went off well. Mrs. Addison, who had two children by her first husband, but none by the second, survived Dr. Addison twelve years. She is described as extremely amiable, and an excellent wife.
In the spring of 1860 Addison was compelled to retire from his hospital duties by a threatening of brain-disease. He settled at Brighton; but his disease progressed, and ended in his death on 29th June 1860. He was buried at Lanercost on the 5th of July. A marble tablet in the chapel of Guy’s Hospital records that he won the admiration and the confidence of the students of the Hospital by his profound knowledge and earnest eloquence: and that he was beloved by the patients for his unwearied attention and kindness to them. One of the medical wards in the new buildings of Guy’s is named after him “Addison Ward.” It is worthy of note that Addison, like John Bell, was a musician, and ready at learning a new instrument. Being slightly deaf in one ear, he was correspondingly acute with the other. This ear he used with surpassing skill in auscultation of the heart and lungs.
In the preface to an edition of Dr. Bright’s “Clinical Memoirs on Abdominal Tumours,” published by the Sydenham Society in 1861, Dr. Barlow well remarks, “There has been no English physician—perhaps it may be said none of any country—since the time of Harvey, who has effected, not only so great an advance in the knowledge of particular diseases, but also so great a revolution in our habits of thought, and methods of investigating morbid phenomena and tracing the etiology of disease, as has the late Dr. Richard Bright. To those who have received the knowledge of the connections of dropsy, albuminous urine, and disease of the kidney, among the first rudiments of medicine, the facts which establish that connection may appear so simple and easily ascertained, that the amount of labour, the accuracy of the observation and the rigid adherence to the inductive method which characterised the whole of Bright’s researches, may hardly have been suspected, still less adequately appreciated.”
Richard Bright was born at Bristol in September 1789, his father being a member of the wealthy banking firm of Ames, Bright, & Cave, and his elder brother subsequently representing Bristol in three parliaments. His early education was conducted by Dr. Estlin, and later by Dr. Carpenter, both names of note in Bristol. In 1808 he entered at Edinburgh University, at first attending Dugald Stewart, Playfair, and Leslie, in whose mathematical class he gained a prize in 1809, commencing the study of medicine under Monro tertius, Hope, and Duncan.