McDowel, Ephraim (1798–1835), surgeon, was born 24 June 1798 at 66 Eccles Street, Dublin, son of the Rev. Benjamin McDowell (qv), a presbyterian clergyman, and Frances McDowell (née Carroll). He was apprenticed as a surgeon to Charles Hawkes Todd (qv) in 1812 and also studied at the RCSI as well as at a number of private medical schools around the city. He qualified LRCSI (1817), gaining membership of the college in 1822. He was appointed to teach surgery and anatomy at the school of medicine in the Hardwicke Hospital. The Hardwicke, along with the Richmond and Whitworth hospitals, was one of the House of Industry hospitals associated with the Dublin workhouse. In 1822 he left the school of medicine to set up a small private school of anatomy at the rear of his house on Eccles Street; he ran this for four years, but closed it when appointed surgeon at the Richmond Hospital (1826). There, with Richard Carmichael (qv), he founded the school of anatomy, medicine, and surgery; however, both men missed the opening ceremony for the new school when they were struck down by fever, an occupational hazard for medical men at the time. His reputation as a good teacher and a skilful surgeon grew, and he was elected MRIA in 1828. At the Richmond he was involved in verifying the efficacy of the stethoscope for diagnosing pulmonary illness, some forty years before it was generally accepted as a diagnostic tool in Britain. Upon his death John MacDonnell (qv) and Robert Adams (qv) succeeded him as surgeons to the House of Industry hospitals.
Contemporary anecdotal evidence supports the view of McDowel as a generous man. He is reputed to have returned an apprentice's fee to his family when the apprentice died after a matter of months, and he refunded to a patient part of the fee charged when he discovered that the man was not wealthy. He married Margaret Horner, daughter of the Rev. James Horner, a governor of the House of Industry hospitals and clergyman at Mary's Abbey presbyterian church; they had three daughters and one son. McDowel died 7 December 1835 at the age of thirty-seven of typhus fever, probably contracted from his patients. His remains were interred in a vault under St Michan's church, Church Street, Dublin, and a marble tablet designed by Francis Johnston (qv) was raised to him by his apprentices and pupils at St George's church in Hardwicke Place.
McDowel's only son, Benjamin George McDowel (1821–85), surgeon and anatomist, was born 27 June 1821 at the residence of his grandfather, James Horner, 23 Lower Dorset Street, Dublin. Although he followed in his father's footsteps in terms of profession, it appears that he did not entirely share his father's genial disposition. Educated in Dublin, he entered TCD in 1836, obtaining his BA in 1841 and becoming FRCSI in 1845. Later he was awarded the MB and MD (1858) and the M.Ch. (1859) by the University of Dublin. He became a licentiate of the Royal College of Physicians of London in the mid-1840s and a member of the RCPI in 1881.
Appointed physician to the House of Industry hospitals (1846) at a time when physicians received a salary while surgeons did not, his reputation as a sound clinician grew steadily, as did his private practice. While maintaining an association with the Richmond Hospital, he succeeded Robert Harrison (qv) as professor of anatomy and physiology at TCD (1858), and in conjunction with this appointment also became surgeon to Sir Patrick Dun's Hospital. Although he was widely regarded as a brilliant and successful surgeon, some members of the TCD staff saw him as absent-minded and ambitious: he was renowned for disregarding rules. Towards the end of his second seven-year term as professor at TCD, the signs of his having overextended himself were beginning to show: unable to keep on top of his commitments as secretary to the Zoological Society, a self-imposed programme of publishing papers in the medical journals, and his duties at the workhouse hospitals, his work at Sir Patrick Dun's began to suffer. When the college dismissed him from this position in 1869 on grounds of poor attendance, he became embroiled in a very public row with the board of TCD that lasted until his retirement in 1879. He went so far as to publish the correspondence between himself and the college in the British Medical Journal in order to defend his performance, and painted the college as unreasonable and unjust in their punitive measures. He managed to gain a third nomination for a third term at TCD in 1872, but his duties and pay were halved with the creation of a new appointment for a professor of comparative anatomy. He did not stand for reelection in 1879, and Alexander Macalister (qv) was appointed to succeed him. In spite of these difficulties it appears that McDowel was a very popular lecturer and his devoted students actively supported him through his many censures by the board of the college.
McDowel was president of the Pathological Society of Dublin (1865) and was appointed physician to the queen in Ireland (1881–5). For many years he was an examiner to the RUI and an examiner and member of the academic council at TCD. He contributed several important papers to the Dublin Journal of Medical Science and the Irish Hospital Gazette. His research on cardiac disease was considered both original and important at the time and was acknowledged as such by eminent medical men, including Robert Graves (qv). His close friends included his Richmond Hospital colleagues Dr Samuel Gordon, Dr John Banks and Professor Robert Smith (qv).
He married Maria Hartwell and they had two sons and four daughters. After a short illness he died 15 September 1885 at his residence in Haddington Terrace, Kingstown (Dún Laoghaire) and was buried alongside his father in the crypt of St Michan's church. His younger son was one of the British troops killed by Zulu at Isandlwana in southern Africa in January 1879, a loss that caused him great sadness.