Dr Francis Kenneth Boston
Personal Details
Dr Francis Kenneth Boston MA MBBCh FFARCS MRCS LRCP DA
14/04/1903 to 23/10/2005
Place of birth: Birkdale, Lancashire
Nationality: British
CRN: 525262
Also known as: Kenneth
Education and qualifications
|
General education |
Terra Nova School, Birkdale; The Leys School, Cambridge; Christ’s College, Cambridge; Westminster Hospital Medical School |
|---|---|
|
Primary medical qualification(s) |
MRCS LRCP, 1930 |
|
Initial Fellowship and type |
FFARCS by Election |
|
Year of Fellowship |
1950 |
|
Other qualification(s) |
BA, Camb, 1924 (MA, 1928); MBBCh, Camb, 1933; DA(RCP&S), 1939 |
Professional life and career
Postgraduate career
After qualifying he was house surgeon at the Hospital of Saints John & Elizabeth, and then emergency officer & anaesthetist at the Westminster Hospital before becoming a GP in Deddington, Oxfordshire in 1935, and also honorary anaesthetist to Horton General Hospital, Banbury. In 1938 he added an appointment as junior assistant anaesthetist at the Radcliffe Infirmary, Oxford (one of Macintosh’s three very earliest clinical appointees), becoming an honorary assistant in 1940 and consultant to the Oxford Hospitals from 1948. He was also clinical lecturer to the University of Oxford, and retired as senior consultant anaesthetist in 1968.
Professional interests and activities
Before WW2, and like Macintosh, he spent part of 1938 providing anaesthetic services at San Sebastian, Spain for casualties of the Civil War, and visited centres in the USA (Hartford, CT & Madison, WI) to widen his experience. During WW2 he was a major contributor to the NDA’s clinical, educational and research activities, the latter relating to survival in submarines. A man with a reputation for thoroughness in all he did, he was awarded an MA by Oxford University in 1963, and much enjoyed having that degree from both Universities!
Other biographical information
From a large family (the 10th of 12 children), Boston married Kathleen F Carnon in 1932, and they had four children. He was a man with a wide range of talents and interests, notably music (suspending his medical studies for a whileto attend the Royal College of Music in London), fly-fishing, ornithology/natural history, railways, literature, art, photography and horticulture (Fellow of the RHS). A very sociable man, he was a member (later secretary) of the Oxford Medical Club, and continued to travel and attend dinners well into his nineties.
Author and Sources
Author: Prof Tony Wildsmith
Sources and any other comments: Beinhart J. A History of the Nuffield Department of Anaesthetics, Oxford 1937-1987. Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1987. | Franco A. Diz JC. Macintosh and the Spanish Connection. www.histansoc.org.uk/uploads/9/5/5/2/9552670/volume_25.pdf | Ancestry.co.uk where a photograph may be seen | Cambridge University Library | Obituary (written by son, Francis). Christ's College Magazine, Cambridge, 2006:116-7 | Simon Boston (son)