| Description | Dr. James Deeny was born on November 7th, 1906, in North Street, Lurgan, County Armagh. After completing his primary and secondary education, Deeny chose to study medicine at Queen’s University Belfast (1923-1927) and following this he obtained a BSc. in bacteriology, biochemistry and pathology, a diploma in public health and an MD in pathology. After a brief six-month period at the State Serum Institute in Vienna researching the bacteriology of tuberculosis, Deeny set up his first general practice in Lurgan in September of 1931. In 1944, Deeny was appointed Chief Medical Adviser to the Department of Local Government and Public Health for the Irish Free State. Between 1950 and 1953 Deeny was seconded to the Medical Research Council as Director of a National Tuberculosis Survey, obtaining two leaves of absence to conduct national tuberculosis surveys for the World Health Organization in Ceylon (Sri Lanka) in 1956 and British Somaliland (now Republic of Somaliland) in 1957. Having resigned from his position with the Department of Local Government and Public Health in Ireland, Deeny served as WHO Chief of Mission in Indonesia from 1958 to 1960, and as Chief of Senior Staff Training at WHO headquarters in Geneva from 1962 to 1967. Between 1963 and 1968, Deeny authored the WHO’s fourth report on the world health situation. He subsequently performed short-term WHO consultancies in Syria and the USSR and served as the WHO’s first ombudsman. Deeny served for a brief period as a locum dispensary doctor in the Fanad peninsula in County Donegal between 1970 and 1971, before being appointed Special Scientific Adviser to the Holy See between 1971 and 1972. He retired in 1975, and remained very active in his local community in Tagoat, County Wexford (to the west of Rosslare Harbour) into old age. He published widely across his life on topics relating to medicine, demography, social sciences and religion. Deeny in his lifetime was also a member of the Royal Irish Academy, Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians of Ireland and held an honorary doctorate from Queen’s University Belfast (awarded 1983). Deeny died on April 3rd, 1994.
Sources used in compiling this contextual history:
Deeny, James. To Cure & to Care: Memoirs of a Chief Medical Officer. Dún Laoghaire: The Glendale Press, 1989.
White, Lawrence William and Diarmaid Ferriter. “Deeny, James Andrew.” Dictionary of Irish Biography, last modified October 2009. https://www.dib.ie/biography/deeny-james-andrew-a2499. |