Robert Irving McNeil, M.D. (1877-1955)

Dr. Robert Irving McNeil, who had practiced medicine in El Paso, Texas for 42 years, died at his home on August 10, 1955, of carcinoma of the lung.  He was born at Elm Hall Plantation in Napoleonville, Louisiana on January 24, 1877.  His parents were Edward Benton and Amanda Kittredge McNeil.

He attended Union University in Jackson, Tennessee and received his medical degree from George Washington University in Washington D.C. in 1903.  He did his postgraduate work at the New York Postgraduate School of Medicine in 1911.  He served an internship at Garfield Hospital in Washington. Dr. McNeil was a physician at the Mescalero Indian Reservation until 1907, when he moved to El Paso to begin his private practice.

In 1919, he entered the United States Public Health Service and became chief of an El Paso quarantine station in 1930.  He was given recognition for his part in bringing under control a smallpox epidemic which threatened the city in 1933, and he helped arrange temporary admission to this country for Mexican citizens who required medical attention in the El Paso hospitals.  He retired in 1949 and devoted his time to his home, travels and writing, and had articles published in medical and historical journals.

Dr. McNeil was a member of the Texas and American Medical Associations through the El Paso County Medical Society, of which he had been a member continuously since 1908.  He had been an honorary member of the state organization since 1947.  He served as county health officer and school physician.  He was also president of the El Paso Archaeological Society, a life member of the Masonic Lodge, and deacon emeritus in the Baptist Church.

During the Spanish-American War, Dr. McNeil served in the U.S. Navy and was stationed in Washington, D.C.  He married Miss Elizabeth Keeling on June 10, 1908 in Washington.  Mrs. McNeil survives, as do three children; Irving McNeil, Jr. of El Morro, New Mexico, Mrs. John A. Ferguson of El Paso, and Mrs. Robert E. Garren of Auburn, Alabama.

== == == published in the Texas State Journal of Medicine, October 1955.  Transcriber is not a relative and has no further information regarding this family.