Dictionary of National Biography, 1927 supplement/Semon, Felix
SEMON, Sir FELIX (1849–1921), laryngologist, was born at Danzig 8 December 1849, the elder son of Simon Joseph Semon, stockbroker, of Berlin, by his wife, Henrietta Aschenheim. He began his medical studies at Heidelberg, but they were interrupted by the Franco-German War (1870–1871), in which he served as a volunteer in the 2nd Uhlans of the Prussian Guard and was awarded the war medal with five clasps. After the War he returned to Berlin and took the M.D. degree in 1873 and the staatsexamen in the following year. He then studied in Vienna and Paris, and came to London in 1874. In 1875 he was clinical assistant at the Hospital for Diseases of the Throat, Golden Square, and in 1877 was elected to the honorary staff of the hospital. From 1882 to 1897 he was physician in charge of the throat department at St. Thomas's Hospital. The department was soon crowded by students and practitioners who were attracted by Semon's growing reputation for ability and diagnostic skill. In 1888 he was appointed laryngologist to the National Hospital for the Paralysed and Epileptic; and here he carried out, in association with Sir Victor Horsley [q.v.], experimental and clinical researches on the central motor innervation of the larynx. As a result of these investigations he demonstrated ‘that in all progressive organic lesions of the centres and trunks of the motor laryngeal nerves, the abductors of the vocal cords succumb much earlier than the adductors’. This is known as Semon's law.
In 1876 Semon was admitted a member, and in 1885 elected fellow, of the Royal College of Physicians. In 1881 he was one of the secretaries of the sub-section of laryngology at the International Medical Congress in London, and managed the work of the section with remarkable efficiency. In 1893 he helped to found the Laryngological Society of London, of which he served as president for three years (1894–1896). He was twice president of the section of laryngology at meetings of the British Medical Association. In 1884 he founded the Internationales Centralblatt für Laryngologie und Rhinologie, and for twenty-five years was its editor. In 1912 he published Forschungen und Erfahrungen, 1880–1910, a collection, in two volumes, of his numerous contributions to medical literature. As a writer he was accurate and painstaking.
Semon rendered great service to the surgery of the larynx by his skill in the early diagnosis of cancer of this organ, and following on the lines laid down by Sir Henry Trentham Butlin [q.v.] he attained great success in removal of the growth by laryngo-fissure. Another valuable piece of work was his recognition of the identity of cachexia strumipriva with myxoedema. This paved the way for all subsequent work on myxoedema and led to the thyroid treatment of this disease.
Many distinctions were bestowed upon Semon. At Queen Victoria's diamond jubilee (1897) he was knighted, and in 1901 he was appointed physician extraordinary to King Edward VII. In that year (1901) he became naturalized as a British subject. In 1902 he received the C.V.O. and in 1905 he was promoted K.C.V.O. In 1888 the order of the Red Eagle was awarded him by Kaiser Wilhelm II, who in 1894 conferred on him the title of royal Prussian professor.
Semon was a man with many artistic and social gifts, who excelled in whatever he took up. He was a fine pianist and composer, and at the end of the Franco-German War his regiment entered Berlin to the strains of a march which he had composed when encamped outside Paris in the winter of 1870–1871. He was a brilliant conversationalist and raconteur, and also a keen sportsman devoted to hunting, shooting, and fishing. He was a most loyal and affectionate friend, and though his temper was easily aroused, it was quickly appeased.
In 1911, at the zenith of his professional career, Semon retired. In recognition of his services to medicine he was entertained at a banquet presided over by Sir Henry Butlin, at which a large and distinguished gathering was present. The sum of £1,040 was subscribed as a testimonial of esteem and appreciation, and at Semon's request the money was presented to the university of London to establish a Semon lectureship in laryngology. After a year's voyage round the world Semon retired to the house which he had built on the Chilterns above Great Missenden. He died there 1 March 1921.
Semon married in 1879 Augusta Dorothea, daughter of Heinrich Redeker, wholesale furniture dealer, of Cloppenburg, Oldenburg, and had three sons.
[Lancet, 1921, vol. i, p. 561; British Medical Journal, 1921, vol. i, p. 404; personal knowledge. See also The Autobiography of Sir Felix Semon, edited by H. C. Semon and T. A. McIntyre, 1926.]