Catherine Neill

Catherine Annie Neill (3 September 1921 – 23 February 2006) was a British paediatric cardiologist who spent the majority of her career at the Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, where she worked alongside Helen B. Taussig. Her primary interest was congenital heart defects; she discovered one type of defect, scimitar syndrome, in 1960.

Early life

Catherine Neill was born in 1921 in London. She was the eldest of four children born to Sir Thomas Neill, a health insurance executive, and his wife Lady Annie Strachan Neill (née Bishop). One of her three younger brothers was Patrick Neill, Baron Neill of Bladen, who would become a barrister.[1] Catherine was educated at Channing School and attended the Royal Free Hospital School of Medicine from 1938 until her graduation in 1944.[2] She was awarded a Diploma in Child Health in 1946 and an MD in 1947.[1]

Career

Neill began her medical career as a paediatric registrar at London's Queen Elizabeth Hospital for Children, where she worked alongside Helen Mackay and developed an interest in congenital heart defects. She travelled to Canada in 1950 to work at The Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto, and she moved to the United States the following year. She took up a post at the Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore as an assistant to Helen B. Taussig, the founder of the field of paediatric cardiology and one of the originators of the Blalock–Taussig shunt, a lifesaving procedure to treat certain heart defects.[3] While in Baltimore, Neill also studied cardiac embryology at the Carnegie Institution for Science.[1] She returned to London in 1954 as a consultant at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital, but in 1956 Taussig requested that she return to Baltimore; she would remain at Johns Hopkins for the rest of her career,[3] and was appointed a professor of paediatrics at Johns Hopkins University in 1964.[2] She co-directed the Baltimore Washington Infant Study of the 1980s, which studied the genetic and environmental factors in 5000 infants with congenital heart defects.[3]

Neill discovered and named scimitar syndrome, in which blood is returned from the lungs to the wrong side of the heart, in 1960.[2][4] Her 1956 publication in the Journal of Pediatrics, which detailed the embryological development of the pulmonary veins, was still cited as the standard description of the topic 50 years later. She co-authored two books: The Heart of a Child (1992), aimed at parents, and The Developing Heart — A "History" of Pediatric Cardiology (1995).[3] She also wrote 40 book chapters and 100 journal articles throughout her career.[2] She was elected a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians in 1970.[1]

Death

Neill retired in 1993 but continued to volunteer at Johns Hopkins.[4] She died from cancer on 23 February 2006 while visiting family in Britain.[2]

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 Clark, Edward B. "Catherine Annie Neill". Munk's Roll Volume XII. Retrieved 16 November 2017.
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 Richmond, Caroline (2 March 2006). "Catherine Neill". The Guardian. Retrieved 16 November 2017.
  3. 1 2 3 4 "Dr Catherine Neill". The Times. 6 March 2006. Retrieved 16 November 2017.
  4. 1 2 Oransky, Ivan (2006). "Catherine Neill" (PDF). The Lancet. 367: 1312.
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