Thomas Addis was a pioneer in the field of nephrology, the branch of internal medicine that deals with diseases of the kidney.
13 Facts About Thomas Addis
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Addis was the son of Thomas Chalmers Addis, a clerk at the local branch of the Inland Revenue Service, and Cornelia Beers-Campbell, who married in Hoboken, New York, in 1880, but he was born in Edinburgh.
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Thomas Addis studied medicine in his native Edinburgh, at the Institute of Pathology of Berlin Charite, and in Heidelberg.
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Thomas Addis graduated from the University of Edinburgh Medical School with an MB in 1905 and an MD in 1908.
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Besides his studies in haemophilia, Thomas Addis made many contributions to the understanding of bile pigment metabolism.
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Thomas Addis developed a means of measuring the number of red blood cells, white blood cells, epithelial cells, casts, and the protein content in urine specimens, a test used in the diagnosis and management of kidney disease.
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Towards the end of his life Thomas Addis began to study laboratory rats as a model of proteinuria, and was among the first people to note the presence of rodent major urinary proteins.
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Thomas Addis supported the loyalists in the Spanish Revolution, and was chairman of the San Francisco chapter of the Spanish Refugee Appeal, an organization that aided refugees from Franco's Spain.
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Thomas Addis toured the Soviet Union in 1935 and came away impressed by the communist country's medical accomplishments.
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Thomas Addis was friends with Harry Bridges and other leftwingers.
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Thomas Addis was chairman of the San Francisco chapter of Physician's Forum, an organization that supported national health insurance.
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Thomas Addis worked on more committees than could reasonably have been expected of so busy a man.
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Tom Thomas Addis was happy to have a hand in bringing to the organization of society some of the logic of science and to further that understanding and to promote that democracy which are the only enduring foundations of human dignity.