Alex Comfort - Early Life and Education

Early Life and Education

Comfort was educated at Highgate School in London. While a student there, Comfort was convinced that he could come up with a superior concoction of gunpowder. In the course of his experiments, he ended up blowing up his left hand, of which only the thumb remained. (Later in life, he claimed that his left hand proved "very useful for performing uterine inversions".) This story is pointed to as evidence of his single-mindedness.

He entered Trinity College at Cambridge University to study medicine. (pre-clinical study leading to a BA, upgraded in 1944 to an MA) and the London Hospital (now known as the Royal London Hospital), qualifying in 1944 with both the Conjoint diplomas of Royal College of Physicians (LRCP) London, Membership of the Royal College of Surgeons (MRCS) England and the Cambridge MB BChir degrees. All in all, he accrued six degrees.

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