Christopher J. Boes

Christopher J. Boes is an American neurologist and historian of medicine. He holds the titles of professor of neurology, professor of history of medicine, director of the W. Bruce Fye Center for the History of Medicine, at the Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minnesota, and since 2022 is the Mayo Clinic Designated Institutional Official (DIO). His research focuses on the management of headache, including migraine and trigeminal autonomic cephalalgias. His work in the field of history of medicine includes research on Sir William Gowers, Sir William Osler, Bayard Taylor Horton, Mary Broadfoot Walker, Betty Clements and Harry Lee Parker.

Boes was president of the American Osler Society (AOS) for 2022–23.

Early life and education
Christopher Boes is from Elgin, Nebraska. One of six children, his father was Gene Boes who ran a farming cooperative, and his mother is Mary Jane. As a child he worked as a paperboy delivering the Omaha World-Herald.

Boes earned his bachelor's degree from Creighton University, and his Doctor of Medicine, with high distinction, from the University of Nebraska College of Medicine in 1996. Following his internship at Nebraska, he completed his residency at the Mayo Clinic College of Medicine, Rochester, Minnesota, before being granted a fellowship with the Headache Group at the Institute of Neurology, National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery, in Queen Square, London.

Career
Boes holds the title of professor of neurology and professor of history of medicine at the Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minnesota. His research focuses on the management of headache, including migraine and trigeminal autonomic cephalalgias. In that field he has analysed the strengths and weakness of evidence for oral magnesium supplementation in the treatment of migraine.

Between 2005 and 2013 he was Neurology Residency Program Director at the Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minnesota. In a personal note regarding student applications to neurology, he reported that after the death of neurologist Oliver Sacks, it became less common for students to mention Sacks in their neurology resident application forms.

In 2022 he was appointed the Mayo Clinic Designated Institutional Official (DIO).

History of medicine
In his research on history of medicine, Boes has focused on Sir William Gowers, Sir William Osler, Bayard Taylor Horton, Mary Broadfoot Walker, Harry Lee Parker, and Betty Clements.

In 2002 he co-authored a detailed account of Wilfred Harris' classification of some of the first reports of cluster headache; what Harris termed 'migrainous neuralgia'. His 2005 paper "Chronic migraine and medication-overuse headache through the ages" noted that ergotamine-misuse headache was reported before Peters and Horton's 1951 clear documentation of it. In the journal Brain in 2010, he co-authored "A history of non-drug treatment of headache, particularly migraine".

In 2014 Boes was appointed director of the W. Bruce Fye Center for the History of Medicine, at the Mayo Clinic. His 2015 paper “The founding of the Mayo School of Graduate Medical Education” highlighted the contribution of Mayo Clinic to American graduate medical education. In his 2016 article "Gowers and Osler: good friends 'all through'", he identified that Osler probably based the neurology parts of his 1892 medical textbook The Principles and Practice of Medicine, on Gowers' neurology manual, first published in 1886.

Between 2015 and 2017 he chaired the history of neurology section of the American Academy of Neurology (AAN). He was president of the American Osler Society for 2022–23, having been first elected there in 2010.

Awards
Boes earned the Henry W. Woltman Award in 2000. He was awarded the AAN's Residency-Fellowship Program Director Recognition Award in 2013. In both 2014 and 2017 he won  the Lawrence C. McHenry Award for excellence in history of neurology research from the AAN.