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22 june 1924 · 13 july 2012
CHRISTOPHER CHARLES BOOTH was a distinguished English physician and clinical scientist, who was also prominent as a medical research administrator and in medical politics. He made notable discoveries in gastroenterology and contributed much to the study of the history of medicine.
Born in Farnham, southern England, he was the second son of the first of two pairs of twins of an eventual family of five. His school days were undistinguished: he was constantly overshadowed by his mathematically precocious twin, who was headed for university. In 1942 Booth, having failed to get the Royal Navy commission his father had desired, left Sedbergh School near the then family home in Yorkshire, with a basic school certificate, and was immediately conscripted as an ordinary seaman. Soon becoming frustrated by shore jobs, he volunteered for "hazardous duties" as a member of the Sea Reconnaissance Unit, whose members would be trained as swimmers who could penetrate enemy defences. There was the small matter of a swimming test, in which several candidates for the final places in the unit had to swim twenty lengths. Booth was rapidly outclassed-many finished their twenty lengths whilst he was on his fifth. He ploughed on as the others finished and went off for their tea. Having completed the assignment, and recognising how ill equipped he was for hazardous duties, he was stunned to be selected on the basis of his persistence. Within a week Booth was on the SS Mauretania heading for California to train as a swimmer and surfer. It wasn't until January 1945 that the unit's skills were called upon, when the Fourteenth Army reached the banks of the Irrawaddy in Burma, and needed expert help to attempt the necessary river crossings. Much of that campaign has been popularised in The Frogmen of Burma, written by Booth's former commanding officer, Bruce Wright. By April the battlefront had moved on, and the unit was stood down. Booth began to think about his peacetime future and, having become friendly with the unit's doctor, David Robertson, considered medicine as a career. Demobbed and accepted by Robertson's old medical school, St. Andrews, he started his medical studies in 1946.
To begin with he had to learn some science. Botany,...