McWeeney, Edmund Joseph (1864–1925), professor of pathology, was born 8 March 1864 in Dublin, third son of Theophilus Joseph McWeeney (1833?–15 October 1900) of Beaumont, Terenure Road, Rathgar, Co. Dublin, a journalist with the Freeman's Journal, and his wife Margaret (1841?–1 June 1913), daughter of Jonathan Kendellen of Castlebar, Co. Mayo. When Edmund (often misspelt ‘Edmond’) was born, the family lived at 60 Heytesbury Street, Dublin; later they moved to 4 Dargan Terrace, off the South Circular Road, Dublin. Edmund had two older brothers who died in infancy, within days of each other. Two younger brothers survived: Henry Charles (‘Harry’) McWeeney, (9 March 1867–23 June 1935; professor of mathematics, University College Dublin (UCD), from 1908), and George Kendellen McWeeney (13 June 1871–14 March 1929). He also had a sister, Katherine Mary (‘Kitty’; b. 8 March 1873), who married (1907) James Bayley Butler (qv), professor of botany and later zoology, also at UCD.
Edmund McWeeney was educated at the Catholic University School, Leeson Street, Dublin, and for one year at the Collège de St Bertin, Saint-Omer, France. In 1881 Edmund matriculated ‘First of First’ to enter the Catholic University of Ireland (CUI), and there won an exhibition and scholarship. Three years later he obtained a first-class honours Bachelor of Arts degree (Royal University of Ireland (RUI)) in modern literature and pathology, and he completed a Master of Arts in 1885. By this time Edmund had already begun his medical studies at the Catholic University school of medicine in Cecilia Street, Dublin. From there he graduated with honours with a Bachelor of Medicine (MB), Bachelor of Surgery (B.Ch.), and Bachelor of Arts in Obstetrics (BAO), in 1887, and he was also awarded a Master of Obstetric Art (MAO) degree the same year. He then devoted himself to the emerging sciences of pathology and bacteriology for the next two years, working in Vienna with Kolisko and Rochitanski and then in Berlin with Koch (who in 1882 had identified the bacteria that caused tuberculosis), Fraenkel and Von Esmarch.
On his return to Dublin (1889/90), McWeeney was swiftly appointed, at the young age of twenty-seven, as the first full-time professor of pathology and bacteriology/microbiology in Ireland in the Catholic University of Ireland, and from 1908 in UCD. A post of bacteriologist/pathologist at the Mater Misericordiae Hospital, Dublin, and the laboratory equipped for it, are said to have been created specifically for him, through the influence of the archbishop of Dublin, William Walsh (qv). For teaching purposes, McWeeney had a small room on the second floor of the university building in Cecilia Street. The Catholic University of Ireland was later incorporated into the National University of Ireland (NUI) (1908), but McWeeney remained in Cecilia Street till 1917, when the UCD department of medicine moved to Earlsfort Terrace. He was the first bacteriologist appointed to the Irish local government board (1900), and later was appointed crown analyst (which carried with it some of the duties of the later state pathologist, such as forensic autopsies) and consulting pathologist to the troops in Ireland. Edmund McWeeney also served as pathologist at the Jervis Street, Coombe and National Lying-in Hospitals, all in Dublin. He was elected a member of the Royal Irish Academy (RIA) (1901), a member of the Royal Dublin Society (RDS), a fellow of the Royal College of Physicians (1905), and fellow (and later president of the pathological section) of the Royal Academy of Medicine in Ireland.
McWeeney published at least fifty-five papers, which are mainly to be found in the Royal Academy of Medicine in Ireland and Mercer's Library, Dublin. His major publication achievements were as translator and co-author of Tappeinner's Chemical methods of clinical diagnosis (1898) (with a fifty-three-page appendix, written solely by McWeeney, on microbiological methods); and the Report to the local government board of Ireland on shell-fish layings on Irish coasts as respects to their liability to sewage contamination (1904). He also contributed numerous papers on human and vegetable pathology and bacteriology to Irish and British journals. The range of subjects is extraordinarily wide in human medicine, and he also dealt with both veterinary and plant pathology, being particularly interested in fungal diseases of potatoes. He avidly followed the career of Louis Pasteur and published a short biography of Pasteur for the Catholic Truth Society. He was one of only three Irish pathologists (the others were White of the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland (RCSI) and A. E. Moore of Queen's College Cork (QCC)) among the founders of the Pathological Society of Great Britain and Ireland, and was present at its inaugural meeting in Manchester (June 1906). After his death, the British Journal of Pathology published a glowing tribute to him. Edmund McWeeney established the science of pathology in Ireland, where his teaching was much respected by the medical profession. In fact, two of his assistants in UCD, T. T. O'Farrell and W. D. O'Kelly, also became professors in that college.
In the late nineteenth century there was an explosion of information on microbiological and fungal diseases and McWeeney was often called on to discover the causes of death in many tragic circumstances. The most famous case was that of Thomas Ashe (qv), a Kerry member of the Irish Volunteers who had died in controversial circumstances while on hunger strike in Mountjoy jail in 1917. McWeeney had conducted the autopsy, and his report that forcible feeding was the cause of death was the only medical evidence not disputed at the coroner's court.
McWeeney was a true polymath, fluent in German and French, and was said to have spoken Russian with a Dublin accent. He was a founder member of the Dublin Naturalists Field Club, where he specialised in fungi and added 252 new species to the 530 already known in Ireland. He was a keen sportsman and photographer and his substantial collection of stereopair photographs on glass slides, which illustrate his family, social and academic life, have been donated to the National Photographic Archive in Dublin.
He married (1891) Emilie (d. 19 October 1944), daughter of Simon Brazil of Kingstown (Dún Laoghaire), Co. Dublin, and took up residence in 84 St Stephen's Green, a property owned by the CUI. It was said at the time that ‘Brains had married Beauty’, and the couple produced a family of five sons – E. J. Theo McWeeney (a tuberculosis specialist in the Department of Local Government and Public Health and in the World Health Organisation), Cecil B. McWeeney (journalist and editor), Desmond T. McWeeney (engineer, and founding secretary of An Taisce), Arthur P. McWeeney (qv) (sports editor, Irish Independent), and Paul D. McWeeney (qv) (sports editor, Irish Times) – and two daughters: Stella M., who married Philip, son of Fergus Quinn, assistant commissioner, Dublin Metropolitan Police (DMP); and Muriel M. (‘Molly’), who married Thomas Waters of Coras Iompair Éireann.
Edmund McWeeney died of Parkinson's disease on 20 June 1925, in Dublin, and was buried at Prospect cemetery, Glasnevin.