Hydrology, Rheumatology, and Rehabilitation: The Campaigning of Fortescue Fox

Soon after qualification, Fortescue Fox (1858-1940) began practice in a Scottish spa where he acquired a lifelong interest in chronic disorders, especially arthritis. He worked to improve the status of spa medicine, recasting it as medical hydrology. At the start of the First World War, his interests turned to the handling of war casualties and a seminal work on physical treatment and rehabilitation was published in 1916. He set up a physical treatment clinic for damaged soldiers and co-founded a residential community where such treatment could be coupled with paid work in rural crafts. After the war Fox was a founder and president of the International League against Rheumatism and helped establish a groundbreaking outpatient clinic from which academic rheumatology in the UK developed. Yet he is not seen as a founding father of British rheumatology, having been on the losing side of an argument about the focus of the specialty. In medical rehabilitation he does have that honour.