Morris Simmonds


Morris Simmonds was a German physician and pathologist. He was born in St. Thomas, then part of the Danish West Indies. In 1861 he emigrated with his family to Hamburg, which was then an independent city.
In 1879 he received his doctorate from the University of Kiel, where he worked as an assistant to Arnold Ludwig Gotthilf Heller and Friedrich von Esmarch. In 1889 he began work as a prosector at St. Georg Hospital in Hamburg and in 1909 attained the title of professor. In 1919 he was named an honorary professor at the newly established University of Hamburg.
His special field of interest was the endocrine glands. His name is associated with "Simmonds' disease", defined as a form of hypopituitarism in which all pituitary secretions are lacking. In 1914 he was the first to describe the diseases' clinical features that were associated with destruction of the anterior lobe.

Selected works

Die ätiologische Bedeutung des Typhus-Bacillus. Untersuchungen aus dem allgemeinen Krankenhause zu Hamburg, Hamburg 1886 - The etiological significance of typhoid bacillus.
  • . Jena, 1907.Ueber Hypophysisschwund mit tödlichem Ausgang. In: Deutsche Medizinische Wochenschrift, vol. 40, No. 7, Berlin 1914, pp. 322–323.