Francis Boott

Francis Boott (26 September 1792 – 25 December 1863) was an American physician and botanist who was resident in Great Britain from 1820.

Boott was born in Boston, Massachusetts, the brother of Kirk Boott, one of the founders of Lowell, Massachusetts. Kirk Boott's father (born in Derby, England, 1750-1817), was also called Kirk Boott. He had emigrated to the United States from England in 1783, and worked in Boston as a wholesale merchant. He was a friend of Joseph Wright of Derby and his family.

Boott entered Harvard College in 1806, and graduated in 1810 with honors. At age 19, he moved to Derby in England apparently with the intention of becoming a merchant, where he spent three years, and became interested in botany. He returned to America, where in 1814 he studied botany.

About 1820, he determined upon studying medicine, and placed himself under the tutelage of Dr. John Armstrong in London. Thence he removed to Edinburgh, where he took his doctor's degree in 1824. On his return to London in 1825 he commenced practice, and accepted the lectureship on botany in the Webb street school of medicine; this chair however, though admirably conducted, he did not long hold. At the dying request of his friend Dr. Armstrong he edited his life. This book bears the following title: Memorials of the Life and Medical Opinions of John Armstrong, M.D. To which is added an Enquir into the facts connected with those forms of devel' attributed to malaria or marsh eflluvium, by Francis Boott, M.D., 1833-34, two volumes.

For seven years Boott practised very successfully in London, being especially noted for his treatment of fevers, in which he followed the practice of giving abundance of air to the patient, a course which at that time was vehemently objected to by the profession at large. In other respects, too, he was ajudicinus innovator, being one of the first to discard the black coat, white neckcloth, kneebreeches, and black silk stockings, for the ordinary costume of the day. This was then a blue coat with brass buttons, and yellow waistcoat, which he continued to wear to the last ; and thus by outliving the fashion, as he had forestalled it, he came to be as well known in 1860 as he had been in 1830. Boott was elected an Associate Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1835.

...
Wikipedia