Cuthbert Christy was born in 1863 and qualified in medicine at the University of Edinburgh. In the early 1890s he travelled to South America and the West Indies. From 1898 to 1900 Christy was senior medical officer to the Second Battalion, West African Field Force in northern Nigeria, after which he served for a brief time in India. Christy was a member of the first Royal Society Africa Sleeping Sickness Commission in 1902, and then worked upon two other expeditions researching the disease organised by the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine and the Sudanese Government. From 1903 to 1910, he travelled widely in Ceylon, East Africa, Uganda, southern Nigeria, the Gold Coast and the Cameroons. Between 1911 and 1914, Christy worked for the Belgian government, investigating sleeping sickness and rubber cultivation in the Congo, and collecting zoological specimens for the Museum of the Belgian Congo.

During 1915-1916, Christy mapped the Nile-Congo boundary for the Sudanese Government, and then served in East Africa and Mesopotamia as an army medical officer. Between 1920 and 1923 he explored the Bahr-el-Ghazal River. From 1925 to 1928, Christy led a zoological expedition to Lakes Tanganyika and Nyasa, collecting specimens on behalf of the British Museum. In 1930, he chaired the Commission set up by the League of Nations to enquire into slavery and forced labour in Liberia. Christy died on 29 May 1932, after being gored by a buffalo while on a zoological investigation in the Belgian Congo.