James Niven (12 August 1851 – 30 September 1925) was a Scottish physician, perhaps best known for his work during the Spanish Flu outbreak in 1918 as Manchester's Medical Officer of Health.

He qualified in 1880, as MB, and worked first for the Metropolitan Asylums Board,[3] being appointed an Assistant Medical Officer at the Deptford fever and smallpox hospital.

[3] During that time, he campaigned to have tuberculosis classed as a notifiable disease by the town's council, obtaining the support of local medical practitioners but failing in his pioneering aim.

[5] Doctors and physicians in Oldham raised enough money to send Niven to Berlin to study with Robert Koch, who had discovered the TB bacillus in 1882, thereby proving that the disease was not caused by "bad air" as was generally believed in accordance with the prevalent miasma theory.

He also used Koch's treatment at the Oldham General Infirmary on his return, as well as dealing with smallpox, typhus, measles, scarlet fever and whooping cough.

"[citation needed] According to medical historian William Povey, whilst at Oldham Niven was "instrumental in improving the standard of housing, of sewage and refuse disposal, of the milk and water supply, in reducing smoke pollution, and containing the spread of infectious diseases."

[3] Niven is noted for trying to restrict the impact in Manchester of the Spanish Flu pandemic that spread to Britain towards the end of World War I.

This included an honorary degree from the University of Aberdeen[4] and the presidency of the Section of Public Health at the Annual Meeting of the British Medical Association in Manchester in 1902.