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Addison
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Addison

weeks after this promotion. Lancelot (1680–1711), the third son, was first of Queen's College, Oxford, and then a demy of Magdalen, of which he became a fellow in 1706. At the university he won a reputation for his classical learning. About the time of his brother Gulston's death he visited Fort St. George, and died there in 1711 (Egerton MS. 1972, fol. 50). Their sister Dorothy (1674–1750) married the Rev. James Sartre, originally a French pastor at Montpelier, afterwards a prebendary of Westminster. Swift (Journal to Stella, 25 Oct. 1710), after dining with her in the company of Addison and Steele, says of her: ‘Addison's sister is a sort of a wit, very like him. I am not fond of her.’ After her first husband's death in 1713 she married a Mr. Combe, and survived till 1750. Dean Addison's second wife, originally Dorothy Danvers, of a Leicestershire family, was a widow when he married her. She died, without issue, in 1719.

[Dean Addison's Works; Memoir in Biographia Britannica (Kippis's), i. 43–44; Wood's Athenæ Oxonienses, ed. Bliss, iv. 517–19; information communicated by the Provost of Queen's College, Oxford.]

F. E.

ADDISON, LAURA (d. 1852), actress, made her first appearance upon the stage in November 1843, at the Worcester Theatre, as Lady Townley in the ‘Provoked Husband.’ Her family had opposed her desire to become an actress; she had no introduction, teacher, or patron, but was altogether self-instructed. She was very favourably received by the public. She fulfilled an engagement at Glasgow, and, playing Desdemona to the Othello of Macready, secured the good opinion and the friendship of that tragedian. At his instance, after she had played with success at Dublin and Edinburgh, she was engaged by Mr. Phelps, and made her first appearance at Sadler's Wells, then under his management, in August 1846, as Lady Mabel in the ‘Patrician's Daughter’ of Westland Marston. She remained at Sadler's Wells three seasons, representing Juliet, Portia, Isabella in ‘Measure for Measure,’ Imogen, Miranda, and Lady Macbeth; she appeared as Panthea upon the revival of Beaumont and Fletcher's comedy of ‘A King and no King;’ and she was the first representative of Margaret Randolph and Lilian Saville in the poetic tragedies of ‘Feudal Times’ and ‘John Saville of Haysted,’ by the Rev. James White. In 1849 she was playing at the Haymarket with Mr. and Mrs. Charles Kean, and in 1850 she accepted an engagement at Drury Lane under Mr. Anderson's management, representing the characters of Mrs. Haller in the ‘Stranger,’ Mrs. Beverley in the ‘Gamester,’ Bianca in ‘Fazio,’ and Leonora in an English version of Schiller's ‘Fiesco,’ &c. &c. In 1851 she left England for America, and died the following year on a voyage from Albany to New York.

[Tallis's Drawing Room Table Book, 1851.]

D. C.

ADDISON, THOMAS (1793–1860), an eminent physician, was born at Long Benton, near Newcastle, in April 1793. His father, Joseph Addison, belonged to a family of yeomen which had long been settled at Lanercost in Cumberland, and was in business as a grocer. Thomas, the younger son, was educated at Newcastle grammar school, and afterwards at the university of Edinburgh, where he graduated M.D. in 1815, writing an inaugural dissertation, ‘De Syphilide.’ He afterwards came to London, where he was appointed house surgeon to the Lock Hospital, and studied diseases of the skin under the celebrated Bateman. Although a doctor of medicine, Addison entered as a student at Guy's Hospital, was appointed assistant physician to the hospital in 1824, and lectured on materia medica in 1827. In the latter position he attracted a large class of students, and was in 1837 promoted to the office of physician to the hospital and joint-lecturer on medicine with Dr. Bright. In his hospital practice he soon became distinguished for his remarkable zeal in the investigation of disease both by observation of cases during life and by post-mortem examinations. He thus acquired a brilliant reputation as a clinical teacher, and contributed perhaps more than any of his colleagues to the fame which Guy's Hospital attained as a school of medicine during his connection with it. Addison laboured as a teacher and investigator till the state of his health compelled him to resign his hospital appointments, and he died not long after his retirement at Brighton on 29 June 1860. He was buried in Lanercost Abbey, Cumberland.

Addison's contributions to the science of medicine were numerous and important. His researches on pneumonia (published 1837 and 1843) brought to light truths novel at the time, which are now generally accepted as indisputable. The memoir on pulmonary phthisis was not less original, though its conclusions are more open to question. They have nevertheless had great influence on the progress of knowledge in this subject. After publishing some important papers on diseases of the skin, Addison produced in 1855 the work by which he is, and will always be,