HISTORY OF MEDICINE IN IRELAND

New Zealand Tablet, 28 April 1910, Page 652

HISTORY OF MEDICINE IN IRELAND

, In. an interesting address at the opening meeting of the thirty-fourth session of Dublin University Biological Association, Dr. T. G. Moorhead, the president, dealing with l ie History of Medicine in Ireland/ pointed out, that, although the records-were scanty, there is sufficient evidence to show that the early Irish medicine men occupied a most important position in the country. In. the earliest centuries following the introduction of Christianity into Ireland numerous students came from abroad to acquire the medical education that Ireland could afford'. During the period between the eleventh century and the sixteenth the profession of medicine was hereditary in certain families the son being educated by the father, and being finally left the possession of the hereditary text-book, which was ti ansmitted as a family heirloom from generation to generation. Many of these text books survive, and are, for the most part, compilations of the knowledge of the ancients. Before the twelfth century Theology and Medicine were often practised together, but when the Council of Tours forbade the shedding of blood by the clergy the profession became separated, and surgery fell into the hands of the barbers and wigmakers. In 1446 the barbers of Dublin were established as a guild, the earliest medical guild in the United Kingdom, and the precursor of the Royal College of Surgeons, which was finally established as a senarate body in 1784. When Medicine and Surgery were Separated. From the time when the barber surgeons first became recognised, a body of men who practised pure medicine as distinct from surgery, and who disdained the humbler wielders of the knife and razor, began to come to the fore as the educated physicians of the country. Some of these men studied abroad, but many belonged to the hereditary families already referred to. . They are the lineal ancestors of the College of Physicians, which was founded in Trinity Hall as an adjunct to Trinity College in 1667, under its. first president, John Shawe, a Fellow of and Professor of Hebrew in Trinity College. The newly-formed college soon showed its independence, and came to blows with I™ 1!/ College over the question of the election of a Catholic president. The breach was, however, healed, and _ after Sir Patrick Dun, a distinguished Dublin physician, had bequeathed the greater part of his estate for the purpose of paying a Professor of Physic in Dublin the union between the two colleges became closer than ever’ and the professors appointed by the Physicians were ordered to lecture within the walls of Trinity College Dublin In the course of time the estate of Sir P. Dun increased in value, and at the same time the want of a hospital in Dublin, where clinical lectures might be given became acute so that an Act of Parliament was sought for and finally obtained, which, neglecting the wishes of Dun sequestrated a portion of his estate for the building and upkeep of the hospital how known as Sir Patrick Dun’s In addition to the schools of the College of Surgeons and College of Physicians, many private schools existed in Dublin from an.early date, and though they have now disappeared, their place has been taken by private teachers who, though unrecognised by the chartered schools continue to exercise an important function as scientific teachers of _ The clinical schools of medicine in Ireland have for centuries been famous throughout the world. There is hardly a single chapter in the whole of medical science which does not bear testimony to the work done by Irishmen

in Ireland. The names of Graves, Stokes, and Corrigan are household words wherever medicine is taught, and to these may be added, from amongst many others, the names of Abraham Colies, Joliffe Tufnell, Shackleton, and Robert Adams; while last, but by no means least, we must not forget that Oliver Goldsmith and Charles Lever were both- products of the Irish medical schools. Professor James Lindsay, Belfast, said the history of Irish medicine was one of the few pages of Irish history which all Irishmen might contemplate with pride and satisfaction. Amongst the many claims to .their regardrwhich that ancient' city of Dublin possessed few, he thought, were stronger and better founded than the fact that she had during many generations given so freely of her wealth and her brain power to the science and art of medicine. She had added many honorable names to the roll of medicine and she had been the Mecca to which many pilgrims had directed their steps. Had Irish medicine any special characteristics? He thought that if they referred to the lectures of Graves and the works of Stokes as models they might fairly say that Irish medicine had always been distinguished for a distinctly practical tendency, a leaning to the teachings of experience, and a preference for clinical observation rather than - pathology. . If he were to claim for Irishmen that they were noted for their practical tendency, their adhesion to fact, their reliance on experience, he might be suspected of irony. But these claims might be put forward for Irish medicine without exaggeration and without paradox.