Roger McNeill

Roger McNeill was born as Ruaraidh McNeill in 1853 in Ardskenish, on Colonsay, in the Inner Hebrides. His name was later anglicised to Roger. His father was Angus McNeill, a cattle herder and his mother, Angus's second wife, was Margaret Smith.^[1] In 1859, his mother died without a resident doctor on the island to attend to her. This event influenced his life and work in public health. He began studying medicine at the University of Edinburgh in 1872 and was awarded the prize for surgery in the junior division in 1874. He graduated in 1877^[2] having studied under notable medical figures such as Sir Joseph Lister, James Spence, surgeon and John Gray McKendrick, physiologist.

McNeill's first job was in general practice in Levenshulme, near Manchester, but illness forced him to quit. He then became a ship's surgeon with the British-India Steam Navigation Company and in 1880 he was appointed as assistant medical officer to the Metropolitan Asylums Board in London. Soon afterwards, he was promoted to Resident Medical Officer of floating hospitals created from old warships docked at Greenwich and used to house patients during a severe smallpox epidemic. Using the hundreds of cases he saw here, he wrote his MD thesis for the University of Edinburgh entitled, "Diagnostic and prognostic value of the initial rashes of smallpox".^[3] For this, he received his MD with first class honours and a gold medal. Thomas Grainger Stewart, Physician to the Queen in Scotland, considered his research to be 'the best account with which he was acquainted of certain points in the clinical history of variola'.^[1]

At the same time as the Napier Commission began, 1883, McNeill was appointed Resident Medical Officer to the Gesto Hospital on Skye. Situated in Edinbane, it was a privately funded hospital but free for the islanders. His work here in identifying death rates in the Hebrides was published in the Edinburgh Medical Journal in 1885 and was considered in the Commission's investigations into the conditions of crofters and cottars in the Highlands and Islands. McNeill observed that the percentages of deaths of women at childbirth was worse than those of women in the most-deprived urban communities. He concluded that 'There is no constituted organisation to look after the public health except in name [i.e. Scotland’s Board of Supervision]... the causes which bring about the difference in mortality are more or less remediable, and might be brought under control.'^[1]

In 1889 McNeill was awarded the Diploma of Public Health by the University of Cambridge and the following year he was appointed as the County Medical Officer for Argyll, the first to hold the position. He continued to publish including articles in the Journal of the Caledonian Medical Society, of which he was a founder member, and to present papers at public health conferences. As the 19th century became the 20th century, McNeill persisted in his pursuit of hospitals and improved public health for Argyll, while local communities strove to appoint and maintain resident doctors. In 1911, his Medical Health Officer's report for Argyll stated that there was one doctor for every 1,289 inhabitants. He also wrote that within the mainly crofting and fishing population 'many are not yet convinced that the prevention of poverty, ill-health, and disease, or the lengthening of human life, are matters over which man has really any control.’^[4]