Eileen Niedfield

She was born in Manhattan, New York, on 16 June 1920, the eldest daughter of Alma Marie Thor Niedfield (1891–1971) and Joseph Henry Niedfield (1893–1952). The family briefly lived in Bedford and Flatbush before settling in the Park Slope neighborhood of Brooklyn.[2] Her mother was descended from German and Irish immigrant. She worked as a model and stage actor during her childhood, including with James Montgomery Flagg. Sr. Niedfield's maternal grandmother, Margaret Fagan (1869–1942), immigrated to New York during the Irish potato famine, working as a bookkeeper for a lace import company.[3] Niedfield's father, Joseph, was descended from German immigrants and converted from Lutheranism to Catholicism as a young man.[4] He served in the New York 27th Infantry Division when it was called up to national service in Mexico (1916–1917) and France (1917–1918). After the war, he worked as a career firefighter in the New York City Fire Department, retiring as a lieutenant.[5]

Graduation day as valedictorian, June 11, 1951, Georgetown University School of Medicine.

Her younger sister, Marjorie Alma Niedfield (1922–2011), earned a Bachelor's of Science in Nursing and worked as a Registered Nurse for many years.[6] She and her husband, Daniel Keirnan, worked to raise funds and awareness for Niedfield's work throughout her career.[7]

Niedfield attended St. Savior Parish Elementary School of Brooklyn, graduating in 1933.[8] She then continued in its middle and high school, and founded the Skyline newspaper in 1938 with Sister M. Rachael, S. S. N. D. They also worked together on the first sodality (a group founded to promote the spiritual works of mercy and corporal works of mercy) at St. Savior, and Niedfield was elected its first prefect.[9] She graduated in May, 1938.

In 1938 she began university study at Manhattanville College, run by the Society of the Sacred Heart/RSCJ. She played field hockey, and co-wrote a play that was presented in November.[10] During her first semester of college, she attended a speech by Mother Anna Maria Dengel, an MD who had founded the Medical Mission Sisters of Philadelphia (MMS) in 1925. Niedfield was so impressed she left college after her first semester to enter the MMS as a postulant on February 11, 1939.[11] She took the habit and became Sister Mary Frederic, making her first public vows on August 15, 1941.[12] At the time, nuns were asked to take the name of a male saint or family member, so she chose Saint Frédéric in honor of her uncle and godfather, Frederick Thor (1900–1985).

She then transferred to Trinity College in Washington, DC (now Trinity Washington University), graduating with a bachelor of science degree in chemistry, magna cum laude, in 1945. Niedfield took her perpetual vows on August 15, 1945 and her final vows a year later on August 15, 1946. In the two years between college and medical school she studied X-ray techniques for a year, and spent six months at a Catholic clinic in Atlanta that served Black patients (all medical facilities were segregated in those years).[13] It was then known as the Catholic Colored Clinic in Atlanta, and later as Southwest Atlanta Hospital, now closed. She then continued to Georgetown University Medical School, enrolling in 1947.[14] She graduated from the Georgetown University School of Medicine on June 11, 1951, as class valedictorian alongside four other women who together were the first to graduate in the program's 101-year history.[15] She graduated summa cum laude, and received a gold medal for highest achievement in bacteriology.[16] She then qualified as a surgeon with her residency at Georgetown University Hospital (now part of MedStar).[17]

During 1951 she interned for one year at Saint Michael's Medical Center in Newark, New Jersey. Then on October 1, 1952, she began work as a junior resident surgeon at Arlington Hospital in Northern Virginia, near Washington, DC, becoming the first member of a religious community to serve as a resident at that hospital.[13]

After an internship and residency, she returned to Georgetown University for a Master of Science in Surgery degree, which she received in 1954.[18] Niedfield served as the Chief Resident for Surgery at Georgetown University Hospital from 1954–1955.[19]

With a tiger cub in India.

Niedfield studied the Hindustani language during her surgery coursework, and then sailed for India in 1955. The MMS operated seven hospitals in South Asia, four in India and three in Pakistan, eventually expanding to eleven. She joined Dr. Ruth Taggart, a graduate of the Woman's Medical College of Pennsylvania, who was the hospital superintendent. Cumulatively she spent nearly 40 years working in a variety of roles including surgeon, chief of surgery, and hospital superintendent, at Kurji Holy Family Hospital, Village of Mandar, Rachi District, State of Bihar, with four years (1960–64) in Patna, India, serving many Muslim women whose husbands and fathers would not allow them to be treated by male doctors.[20] The hospital had 130 beds, averaged 600 major surgical cases per year, and had 3,000 total inpatients annually.[21] Its services included general care, surgery, obstetrics-gynecology, pediatrics, a pharmacy, a substance abuse detox center, and a nursing school, all of which she oversaw while serving as hospital superintendent (1987–1992).[22]

Her congregation and Mother Teresa's were connected, as Mother Teresa worked briefly at one of the Medical Mission Sisters' hospitals, and they and the Missionaries of Charity periodically trained one another's nurses.

She became a bi-monthly columnist for the MMS, contributing a column titled "The Doctor's Diary."[14] On April 24, 1967, the work of the MMS was honored by Representative Joshua Eilberg (D-Pennsylvania) when he read a citation including her name into the Congressional Record.[23] In the book The Hills Around Me, author Imtiaz Fiona Griffiths describes how Dr. Niedfield saved her husband's life in India by performing emergency surgery.[24]

Niedfield spent two years (1979-1981) in Bhutan, a kingdom on the border between Tibet and India.[25] She wrote that it was all but impossible to enter Bhutan without an official invitation, as its policies were isolationist. However, the Buddhist Bhutanese government was eager to update the quality of its healthcare, so healh ministers inviter her in a non-missionary capacity.[26]

There she served as the zonal medical officer and as the chief medical officer at the 60-bed Tashigang Civil Hospital in eastern Bhutan near the Chinese border. Patients suffering from leprosy and tuberculosis were common. Some of the health centers in the zone were only accessible on horseback.[27] Creating and conducting short courses on basic medical care, and issuing standing orders for simple medical conditions, were vital, as it was impossible to get to each center across the large zone more than four times each year.[27] Although the Bhutan government offered to renew her contract, she left because the work was too isolated and lonely.[26]

In 1966 she returned to the United States to complete some requirements of the American Board of Surgery that had recently been augmented. She then become a Fellow of the American College of Surgeons, and was listed as a board-certified surgeon.[23] She also took the opportunity to stuff a suitcase with an IV glucose mixture because of a sugar shortage in India, coupled with a famine. "It's only enough for four or five operations," she told a correspondent for the College of Physicians of Philadelphia, "but it might well save a life."[28] Supplies were a constant worry. While in India she started a nonprofit charity, "Sr. Niedfield's Brothers," to collect funds for surgical instruments and medical supplies. In Washington, DC, Dr. George Ware collected the money and sent it to her.[29]

During Niedfield's time abroad, she was brought back to the US for training, time with family, and relaxation. She dedicated one of these trips (1976–77) in service as a staff physician with the American Medical Association's “Project USA” program in support of the US Department of Health, Education, & Welfare. She worked in South Dakota at the Aberdeen Area Indian Health Service, the Omaha-Winnebago Service Unit, and at the Fort Defiance, Arizona Indian Hospital.[30]

In 1992 she moved to serve at the Owen Clinic with HIV/AIDS patients.[26] "I was interested in AIDS because I felt there was a great need not just medically but also socially and spiritually," she told a reporter.[8] In those years she was also a part-time volunteer at the St. Vincent de Paul Village-Joan Kroc Medical Clinic in San Diego, serving people experiencing homelessness. During her time in San Diego, Niedfield also worked part time as a primary care physician in internal medicine at the San Diego Veterans Administration Outpatient Clinic (1993–2001), and as an assistant clinical professor of internal medicine for the University of California San Diego.[26]

In 2001, largely due to failing eyesight, she retired from practicing medicine at the age of 81 and moved to the Regina Residence in Orange, California, run by the Sisters of St. Joseph.[26] She died on 19 March 2007 and is buried at the Fox Chase Medical Mission Sisters center in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

In 2019, students at Georgetown University circulated a petition and published an op-ed calling on the university to name a pavilion for her at MedStar Georgetown University Hospital.[31][32]

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