Eileen Niedfield

Eileen Rae Niedfield (June 16, 1920 – March 19, 2007), also known by her religious name Mary Frederic Niedfield , was an American surgeon, general physician, and religious sister of the Medical Mission Sisters. She worked for nearly 40 years in India and for two years in Bhutan. Niedfield was in the first cohort of Georgetown University Medical School alumni that included women, graduating in 1951 as valedictorian and with the highest national board grades in pathology in the United States.

In her work in India and Bhutan from 1955 to 1992, she served many Muslim women whose husbands and fathers would not allow them to be treated by male doctors. Some of the postings were remote, where people otherwise had no access to medical care. Her work brought her to the attention of Mother Teresa, whose nursing sisters shared training and facilities with her congregation.

When she returned to the United States in 1992, Niedfield moved to San Diego to serve HIV/AIDS patients because she believed the need was great. She also carried out part-time volunteer work at St. Vincent de Paul Village-Joan Kroc Medical Clinic for individuals experiencing homelessness.

Early life and education Eileen Rae Niedfield was born in Manhattan, New York, on June 16, 1920, the eldest daughter of Alma Marie Thor Niedfield and Joseph Henry Niedfield. She attended St. Savior Parish Elementary School of Brooklyn, graduating in 1933. She then continued in its middle and high school, and founded the Action newspaper, later called Salvator and Skyline, in 1939 with one of the teachers who was a Catholic sister. 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; Niedfield was elected its first prefect. During her first semester of college, she attended a speech by Mother Anna Maria Dengel, a medical doctor 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. She took vows and became Sister Mary Frederic, making her first public vows on August 15, 1941.

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 (high honors) in 1945. Niedfield took her perpetual vows on August 15, 1945, and her final vows a year later on August 15, 1946. After college she spent a year studying X-ray technology. She then spent six months at a Catholic clinic in Atlanta that served Black patients (all medical facilities were segregated in those years). It was then known as the Catholic Colored Clinic in Atlanta, and later as Southwest Atlanta Hospital, now closed. Two years after college she enrolled in the Georgetown University School of Medicine, matriculating in 1947. She graduated on June 11, 1951, with her medical degree, summa cum laude (highest honors), with the highest grades in her class, and with the highest national board grades in pathology in the United States. She graduated alongside four other women who together were the first to graduate in the program's 101-year history. She then qualified as a surgeon with her residency at Georgetown University Hospital (now part of MedStar).

In 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 be a resident at that hospital. Niedfield served as the Chief Resident for Surgery at Georgetown University Hospital from 1954 to 1955.

Medical service 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 superintendent of the medical college's hospital. 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. The hospital averaged 600 major surgical cases per year, and had 3,000 total inpatients annually.

Her congregation and Mother Teresa's were connected, because 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. 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.

Niedfield became a bi-monthly columnist for the MMS, contributing a column titled "The Doctor's Diary". 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.

Her time in Bhutan Niedfield spent two years (1979–1981) in Bhutan, a kingdom on the border between Tibet and India.

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. 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.

In 1992, she moved to serve at the Owen Clinic with HIV/AIDS patients. As of April 2025 the effort has not been successful, and the pavilion was named for the donor, philanthropist Grant Verstandig.