Thomas Addison`s first report

Introduced by Charles Douglas Wehner

Sightings of the Loch Ness Monster, of Addison sufferers and of Addison`s first report have all been frequent - but substantiation has been rare.

The commonest references give Volume 43, pages 517 and 518, in the London Medical Gazette - but the Gazette stopped at Volume 39.

The solution came from Jette Nielsen, at the Wellcome library, London. She discovered that everybody uses A Medical Bibliography (Garrison and Morton), which quotes volume 43. However, the correct volume number is N.S. volume 8. This is on the spine. It is dated 1849.

Whilst copying the text to file, Charles Wehner noted that it is only on the final printed page - p.1142 - that the fine print states

END OF VOL XLIII. - VOL. VIII. NEW SERIES.

It is usual to search bookshelves by reading the spine. Nobody would dream of reading through each book in search of its old-series number.

So Jette Nielsen brought an eight-month search to its conclusion. Many, many thanks.

A remarkable aspect of Addison`s first report, at least as far as witnessed here, is that there is NO MENTION of the spurious pigmentation - the very symptom that amateur experts claim to be central to the diagnosis.

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