John Soothill

John Farrar Soothill (20 August 1925 – 23 September 2004) was an English medical doctor. He began his career as a nephrologist and later became a paediatric immunologist at Great Ormond Street Hospital.

Biography John Soothill was born in 1925 in Blackheath, London. His father was the chief medical officer in Norwich and his grandfather, William Edward Soothill, had been the first professor of sinology at Oxford University. He attended The Leys School, Cambridge, and in spite of his dyslexia went on to study medicine at Christ's College, Cambridge. He completed his national service in Germany, did his clinical training at Guy's Hospital and Lewisham Hospital. He also focused on childhood allergies, proposing the theory that allergies and eczema resulted from the exposure to allergens in the first six months of a baby's life. He pioneered the use of elimination diets whereby a child with an unknown food allergy is denied all possible allergic sources in their diet, then each food is reintroduced one by one until the causative food is identified.

Soothill retired in 1985 to Devon with his wife Brenda Thornton, whom he had married in 1951. He died on 23 September 2004 in Axminster.