John Addison Fordyce

John Addison Fordyce was born on February 16, 1858 in Guernsey County, Ohio.^[1] His father John Fordyce was of Scottish ancestry and mother Mary A. Houseman Fordyce of German.^[1] He gained his first degree in 1878 and PhD in 1901, both from Adrian College, Adrian.^[1]

He graduated in 1881 with a degree in medicine from the Chicago Medical College, and subsequently completed his junior posts at the Cook County Hospital in Chicago.^[1] Between 1883 and 1886 he lived at Hot Springs, Ark.^[1] Between 1886 and 1888 he was in Vienna, Paris, and Berlin, from where he received his MD..^[1] In Vienna, he studied dermatology with Moritz Kaposi.^[1][2] In Paris he studied under Jean Alfred Fournier, Émile Vidal and Ernest Besnier.^[1]

He returned to the States and settled down in New York, where he was a specialist in dermatology and syphilis. From 1889 to 1893 he taught at the New York Polyclinic, and later he served as a professor at the Bellevue Hospital Medical College and the Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons.^[2]

In 1896, he reported on small bumps in the mouth, which he described as a disease.^[3] These came to be referred to as Fordyce spots and were found to be only normal sebaceous glands.^[3]

He died on June 4, 1925 in New York.^[2] His name is associated with Fordyce's spot, angiokeratoma of Fordyce, Brooke–Fordyce trichoepithelioma, and Fox–Fordyce disease.^[4]

• Fordyce, J. A. (1 November 1896). "A peculiar affection of the mucous membrane of the lips and oral cavity" (PDF). Archives of Dermatology. 132 (11): 1285. doi:10.1001/archderm.1996.03890350023003.