Christopher Booth
Sir Christopher Charles Booth (22 June 1924 – 13 July 2012) was an English clinician and medical historian, characterised as "one of the great characters of British medicine".
Booth was born in 1924 in
He served as a frogman in the Royal Navy from 1942. A Navy doctor encouraged him to study medicine, so he enrolled at the
His medical speciality was
Booth defended, Chris Pallis, a neurologist working under him at Hammersmith Hospital, when he was attacked for his left-wing views.[3] He was also an outspoken, on one occasion noting that taking the doctors' pay demand to the then prime minister, Margaret Thatcher, would be not a red rag to a bull, as a colleague suggested, but "a red rag to an old cow".[1]
He published four books and 50 papers on the history of medicine, and played a leading role in the founding of the History of Modern Biomedicine Research Group.
A ward at the Hammersmith Hospital is named after him and looks after gastroenterology patients.
He married three times; firstly Lavinia Loughridge, with whom he had a son and daughter, secondly Professor Soad Tabaqchali, with whom he had another daughter and lastly Joyce Singleton, who survived him.[2]
Awards and honours
- Honorary Fellow, American College of Physicians, 1973
- Chevalier de l’Ordre National du Mérite, 1977
- Honorary LLD, University of Dundee, 1982
- International member, American Philosophical Society, 1981[4]
- Honorary Fellow, Royal Society of Medicine, 1991
- Knighted for services to medicine in 1982
References
- ^ a b Richmond, Caroline (31 August 2012). "Sir Christopher Booth Obituary". The Guardian. Retrieved 16 September 2015.
- ^ a b c "Sir Christopher Booth". Daily Telegraph. 7 October 2012. Retrieved 18 May 2015.
- PMC 556175.
- ^ "APS Member History". search.amphilsoc.org. Retrieved 14 June 2022.
External links
- Portrait at the National Portrait Gallery
- Christopher Booth on the History of Modern Biomedicine Research Group website
