Dr Roger McNeill and public health in the Highlands and Islands of Scotland
Roger McNeill was born in 1853 on Colonsay in the Inner Hebrides, the son of a cattle herder. He graduated with a degree in medicine from Edinburgh University, where he studied with Joseph Lister, among others. After working in London during a smallpox epidemic, he received a gold medal and honours for his M.D. thesis in 1881. McNeill returned to Scotland as the Resident Medical Officer at Gesto Hospital on the Isle of Skye. From there, he launched and published the first statistical research about the health of Highland crofters.