Christopher Addison, 1st Viscount Addison

Christopher Addison, 1st Viscount Addison (19 June 1869 – 11 December 1951), was a British medical doctor and politician. A member of the Liberal and Labour parties, he served as Minister of Munitions during the First World War and was later Minister of Health under David Lloyd George and Leader of the House of Lords under Clement Attlee.

He was a prominent anatomist and perhaps the most eminent doctor ever to enter the Commons. He was a leader in issues of health, wartime munitions, housing and agriculture. Although not highly visible, he played a major role in the post war governments after both world wars. Addison worked hard to promote the National Insurance scheme in 1911. Lloyd George made him the first Minister of Health when the ministry was created in 1919, and Addison oversaw an expansion of council housing after the Great War with an increase in public funding to local authority housing schemes with the Housing, Town Planning, &c. Act 1919. He later joined the Labour Party.

Addison was born in the rural parish of Hogsthorpe in Lincolnshire, the son of Robert Addison and Susan, daughter of Charles Fanthorpe. His family had owned and run a farm for several generations and he maintained a strong interest in agriculture and rural matters throughout his life. He attended Trinity College, Harrogate, from the age of thirteen. He trained in medicine at Sheffield School of Medicine and St Bartholomew's Hospital in London. His education was expensive for his family, and he insisted on re-paying his parents once he had begun his career.^{[citation needed]}

In 1892, Addison graduated from the University of London as a Bachelor of Medicine and Science with honours in forensic medicine. A year later he qualified as a Medical Doctor and two years after that he was elected a Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons. He combined private practice with academic research, and taught anatomy at Sheffield School of Medicine. In 1896 he became professor of anatomy at the newly formed University College of Sheffield, and edited the Quarterly Medical Journal from 1898 to 1901. In 1901, he moved to London again, teaching at Charing Cross Hospital. He published his research on anatomy and became Hunterian professor with the Royal College of Surgeons.

Addison's principal contributions to anatomy were in his writings in three volumes of the Journal of Anatomy, 1899–1901, "On the topographical anatomy of the abdominal viscera in man". Subsequently, he contributed to the three-dimensional mapping of the abdomen, which was based on numerous bodily measurements, "some 10,000 measurements made on forty bodies". He linked his measurements to an imaginary plane of section, known as "Addison's transpyloric plane".

Motivated by concern for the treatment of the poor, and that the effects of poverty on health could be fought only by governments, not by doctors, Addison entered politics. He was adopted as Liberal candidate for Hoxton, Shoreditch, in 1907, and was duly elected in the January 1910 general election.

The Chancellor of the Exchequer, David Lloyd George, noted Addison's medical background and asked him to speak in support of the 1911 National Insurance Bill, both in Parliament and with the British Medical Association. In August 1914, he was appointed Parliamentary Secretary to the Board of Education, under Jack Pease. His work here was largely concerned with improving the health and welfare of children, but was cut short following the outbreak of the First World War.^{[citation needed]}

Addison became Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Munitions in May 1915.^{[citation needed]}