J. Fortescue

Last updated

Honorable J. Fortescue (alleged to have been born in 1868) was a nonexistent American surgeon and founder of the International Board of Hygiene that the League of Nations recognised in 1926.

Honorable J. Fortescue was a brainchild of San Diego pathologist Rawson Pickard. The International Board of Hygiene was little else than a group of drinking friends who had founded it in a Turf Bar in Tijuana, Baja California, during the Prohibition. The original Sir John Fortescue (1385–1479) was an English lawyer.

Because most of the meetings were organised outside the borders of the U.S., the Board had to be international, and because many of the members were medical professionals, its theme was hygiene—the League of Nations already had its own International Board of Health. Anyone who had attended the meeting once became a lifetime member. On October 21, 1926, Pickard sent a long letter to the League of Nations headquarters in Geneva and received recognition in a couple of weeks.

In the following years, various organisations and publications expressed interest about the Board and its reclusive president Fortescue. The United States National Research Council included him in a directory of child psychologists and he was invited to join the American Conference on Hospital Service. Pickard wrote dozens of articles in Fortescue's name and answered journalists' enquiries in his stead. It appears none of the recipients ever bothered to check his credentials.

At the same time, the membership of the International Board of Hygiene spread by invitation. Every meeting was concluded with the reading of a scientific paper.

The 1936 Who's Who in San Diego included an entry about Fortescue, listing his multiple publications, memberships in associations, medical studies and travels, including winning the "Fleischmann prize" (actually a letter-writing contest for Fleischmann's Yeast). It also claimed that his mother was Lola Montez and that he lived in Paris. His only official address was "The International Board of Hygiene, 1908 Eutaw Place, Baltimore, Maryland". Some of the studies would have been really groundbreaking at the time, preceding such scientific studies like Kinsey surveys.

Rawson Pickard died in 1963. The correspondence of the Honorable J. Fortescue ceased as well.

Related Research Articles

Cold fusion Hypothetical type of nuclear reaction

Cold fusion is a hypothesized type of nuclear reaction that would occur at, or near, room temperature. It would contrast starkly with the "hot" fusion that is known to take place naturally within stars and artificially in hydrogen bombs and prototype fusion reactors under immense pressure and at temperatures of millions of degrees, and be distinguished from muon-catalyzed fusion. There is currently no accepted theoretical model that would allow cold fusion to occur.

League of Nations 20th-century intergovernmental organisation, predecessor to the United Nations

The League of Nations, was the first worldwide intergovernmental organisation whose principal mission was to maintain world peace. Founded on 10 January 1920 following the Paris Peace Conference that ended the First World War, it ceased operations on 20 April 1946.

American Geophysical Union Nonprofit organization of geophysicists

The American Geophysical Union (AGU) is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization of Earth, atmospheric, ocean, hydrologic, space, and planetary scientists and enthusiasts that according to their website includes 130,000 people. AGU's activities are focused on the organization and dissemination of scientific information in the interdisciplinary and international fields within the Earth and space sciences. The geophysical sciences involve four fundamental areas: atmospheric and ocean sciences; solid-Earth sciences; hydrologic sciences; and space sciences. The organization's headquarters is located on Florida Avenue in Washington, D.C.

International Rugby League

The International Rugby League (IRL) is the global governing body for the sport of rugby league football. Previously known as the Rugby League Imperial Board, the International Rugby League Board and latterly the Rugby League International Federation, the IRL is responsible for the Laws of the Game, the development, organisation and governance of rugby leagues internationally, and for the sport's major international tournaments; most notably the Rugby League World Cup.

The American College of Nutrition (ACN) is a 501(c)(3) charitable non-profit organization established to encourage the scientific investigation of nutrition and metabolism. The ACN publishes the Journal of the American College of Nutrition and hosts scientific conferences in the US and in Europe.

The American Medical Writers Association (AMWA) is a professional association for medical communicators, with more than 4,000 members in the United States, Canada, and 30 other countries. AMWA is governed by a board of directors composed of the elected officers, 6–8 at-large directors, and the chapter advisory council chair. AMWA has regional chapters and provides local networking opportunities throughout the United States and Canada. The association was founded in 1940 by physicians interested in improving the quality of medical writing and editing. The current president is Gail Flores, PhD.

Delta Omega Public health honorary society

Delta Omega (ΔΩ) is the honorary society for studies in public health, founded at the Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health.

International Society for Computational Biology

The International Society for Computational Biology (ISCB) is a scholarly society for researchers in computational biology and bioinformatics. The society was founded in 1997 to provide a stable financial home for the Intelligent Systems for Molecular Biology (ISMB) conference and has grown to become a larger society working towards advancing understanding of living systems through computation and for communicating scientific advances worldwide.

Martin Fleischmann British chemist

Martin Fleischmann FRS was a British chemist who worked in electrochemistry. Premature announcement of his cold fusion research with Stanley Pons, regarding excess heat in heavy water, caused a media sensation and elicited skepticism and criticism from many in the scientific community.

Paul Billings is an American doctor, lecturer, researcher, professor, and consultant on genetic information. His major research interests include the impact of genomic information and biotechnology on society, the integration of genomics and diagnostics in to health and medical care and individualized genomic medicine. Dr. Paul Billings is the author of nearly 200 publications and books on genomic medicine, has spoken at numerous medical conferences, and appeared on talk shows such as The Oprah Show and 60 Minutes. He is currently the chief medical officer of Natera, chairman of Biological Dynamics, Inc. and Plumcare LLC, and CEO of Synergenz Bioscience, Inc.

The American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene (ASTMH) is an Arlington, Virginia-based non-profit organization of scientists, clinicians, students and program professionals whose longstanding mission is to promote global health through the prevention and control of infectious and other diseases that disproportionately afflict the global poor. ASTMH members work in areas of research, health care and education that encompass laboratory science, international field studies, clinical care and country-wide programs of disease control. The current organization was formed in 1951 with the amalgamation of the American Society of Tropical Medicine, founded in 1903, and the National Malaria Society, founded in 1941.

Organisation of the League of Nations

The League of Nations was established with three main constitutional organs: the Assembly; the Council; the Permanent Secretariat. The two essential wings of the League were the Permanent Court of International Justice and the International Labour Organization.

English-language press of the Communist Party USA Press

During the ten decades since its establishment in 1919, the Communist Party USA produced or inspired a vast array of newspapers and magazines in the English language.

K. Srinath Reddy

K. Srinath Reddy is the president of the Public Health Foundation of India and formerly headed the Department of Cardiology at All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS).

Elvira Rawson de Dellepiane

Dr. Elvira Rawson de Dellepiane was a militant suffragist and the second woman to receive a medical degree in Argentina. She was an activist for women's and children's rights and was known as "the mother of women's rights in Argentina".

Lya Imber (1914–1981) was born in Odessa, Ukraine on March 17 of 1914 and died from cancer in Caracas, Venezuela on September 23 of 1981. She was a prominent pediatrician vice president of UNICEF, and the first woman in Venezuela to earn the degree of Doctor of Medical Sciences, as well as the first female member of the board of the Medical School of the Federal District.

Eduardo Liceaga

Eduardo Liceaga (1839–1920) was a Mexican physician known as the "most distinguished hygienist of late-nineteenth century Mexico". He was involved in the establishment of the General Hospital of Mexico.

The British Pain Society (BPS) is a multidisciplinary community that brings together a diverse group of clinicians, nurses, physiotherapists, scientists, patients, and other professionals to improve the knowledge of pain, and implement new public policies and clinical practices to alleviate pain-related suffering. The society was founded in 1967. The BPS has a wide range of activities, from setting standards in clinical care, offering conferences, meetings, courses for special interest groups as well as publishing the British Journal of Pain. Patients are also actively involved with the work of the society.

Rachelle Yarros

Rachelle Slobodinsky Yarros was an American physician who supported the use of birth control and the social hygiene movement. A graduate of the Woman's Medical College of Pennsylvania, Yarros resided at Hull House for many years and opened the second birth control clinic in the nation there. She was an obstetrician/gynecologist affiliated with the University of Illinois at Chicago and the Chicago Lying-in Hospital.

The Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE) is a British Government body that advises central government in emergencies. It is usually chaired by the United Kingdom's Chief Scientific Adviser, currently Sir Patrick Vallance. Specialists from academia and industry, along with experts from within government make up the participation, which will vary depending on the emergency. SAGE gained public prominence for its role in the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic in the United Kingdom.

References

This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.