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Medicine in Gaelic Ireland and Scotland, C.1350–C.1750

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Medicine in Gaelic Ireland and Scotland, C.1350–C.1750 Irish Historical Studies (2020), 44 (166), 201–223. © Irish Historical Studies Publications Ltd 2020 doi:10.1017/ihs.2020.35 Medicine in Gaelic Ireland and Scotland, c.1350–c.1750 PIERCE GRACE* University of Limerick ABSTRACT. Between c.1350 and c.1750 a small group of professional hereditary physicians served the Gaelic communities of Ireland and Scotland. Over fifty medical kindreds provided advice regarding health maintenance and treatment with herbs and surgery. Their medical knowl- edge was derived from Gaelic translations of medieval European Latin medical texts grounded in the classical works of Hippocrates and Galen, and the Arab world. Students studied in medical schools where they copied and compiled medical texts in Irish, some for use as handbooks. Over 100 texts are extant. Political upheaval and scientific advances led to the eclipse of this med- ical world. Through examination of the Gaelic medical manuscripts and other sources this article provides an assessment of medicine in Gaelic Ireland and Scotland from the mid-fourteenth to the mid-eighteenth centuries. rom the mid-fourteenth century a resurgence of Gaelic society in Ireland Freduced the area of English government to the Pale, comprising the ‘loyal’ counties of Dublin, Louth, Meath and Kildare.1 A document prepared for Henry VIII in 1515 stated: ‘ther byn more then 60 countryes, called Regyons, in Ireland inhabytyd with the Kinges Irishe enymyes’, in other words the Gaelic Irish.2 The descendants of the Anglo-Normans outside the Pale, who had ‘degenerated’ by adopting Gaelic ways, were labelled the king’s ‘Englyshe greate rebelles’.3 In Scotland, Gaelic society and culture also prospered.4 Alexander III had incorpo- rated the Highlands and Islands into the Scots kingdom in 1266, but by 1400 there existed distinct Scots- or English-speaking Lowlands (Galldachd) and Gaelic-speaking Highlands (Gáidhealtachd).5 K. W. Nicholls wrote that Gaelic society comprised ‘clans or lineages’ descending in the male line ‘forming a * University of Limerick Medical School and Department of History, University of Limerick, [email protected] 1 James Lydon, The lordship of Ireland in the middle ages (Dublin, 2003), p. 156. 2 ‘The state of Ireland and plan for its reformation’, 1515 (S.P. Hen. VIII, ii, 2). 3 Ibid., ii, 6. 4 Colin Breen, ‘Scottish, Irish or other? Negotiating identity in late medieval north Ulster’ in Eve Campbell, Elizabeth Fitzpatrick and Audrey Horning (eds), Becoming and belonging in Ireland, AD c.1200–1600: essays in identity and cultural practice (Cork, 2018), pp 129–47. 5 Wilson McLeod, Divided Gaels: Gaelic cultural identities in Scotland and Ireland c.1200–c.1650 (Oxford, 2004), pp 14–19; S. G. Ellis, ‘The collapse of the Gaelic world, 1450–1650’ in I.H.S., xxxi, no. 124 (Nov. 1999), pp 449–69. 201 Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. IP address: 170.106.202.58, on 02 Oct 2021 at 14:21:03, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/ihs.2020.35 202 Irish Historical Studies definite corporate entity with political and legal functions’.6 The clan (sliocht) occupied particular lands and the chief was supported by literate, privileged, her- editary professionals; ‘as they [the chiefs] had Brehons of one Sept or Family, so also they had Historians, Physicians, Chirurgions, Poets and Harpers of other pecu- liar Septs, to every one of which certain Lands were assign’d’.7 This article pro- vides an assessment of medicine as it was practised by the hereditary physicians of Ireland and Scotland from c.1350, when the first extant Gaelic medical manu- script was compiled, to c.1750, when the last members the Morrison hereditary medical family practised in Skye, with a particular focus on the physicians, their medical schools and manuscripts, and their encounters with patients.8 I The literature relating to medicine in pre-modern Ireland runs to hundreds of publications.9 While over 100 medieval Gaelic medical manuscripts are extant, very few of them have been studied in detail.10 In Ireland the principal medical manuscript collections are held by the Royal Irish Academy (R.I.A.), Trinity College, Dublin (T.C.D.), the National Library of Ireland (N.L.I.) and the King’s Inns, while in Britain, the British Library (B.L.), the libraries of Oxford and Edinburgh universities, and the National Library of Scotland (N.L.S.) hold the majority.11 Recently, a number of excellent electronic sources with digital images have become available.12 Unfortunately, the inability of researchers to engage with Gaelic manuscripts due to ignorance of the language, difficulty in interpreting scri- bal abbreviations and lack of English translations hampered detailed analyses of the texts until recently. While Sir Norman Moore appreciated that the Gaelic manu- scripts were translations of Latin medieval medical treatises,13 many early scholars concentrated on the identification and history of the medical kindreds rather than 6 K. W. Nicholls, Gaelic and Gaelicised Ireland in the middle ages (2nd ed., Dublin, 2003), p. 9. 7 James Ware, Inquiries concerning Ireland and its antiquities (Dublin, 1705), p. 22. 8 The oldest extant Irish medical manuscript, dated to 1352, is R.I.A., MS 23 F 19; John Bannerman, The Beatons, a medical kindred in the classical Gaelic tradition (Edinburgh, 2015), p. 122. 9 Donnchadh Ó Corráin, Clavis litterarum Hibernensium: medieval Irish books & texts (c.400–c.1600) (3 vols, Turnhout, 2017), iii, 1707–14. 10 Aoibheann Nic Dhonnchadha, ‘Medical writing in Irish’ in Irish Journal of Medical Science, clxix, no. 3 (2000), pp 217–20. 11 For lists of the manuscripts and their current whereabouts see: Aoibheann Nic Dhonnchadha ‘Early modern Irish medical writings’ in Scéala Scoil an Léinn Cheiltigh: Newsletter of the School of Celtic Studies, iv (1990), pp 35–9; ‘List of unpublished medical manuscripts in Irish libraries’ in CELT: Corpus of Electronic Texts (hereafter CELT) (https:// celt.ucc.ie/mslist_wulff.html) (13 Mar. 2019); Ronald Black, ‘Catalogue of Gaelic manu- scripts in the National Library of Scotland’ (https://www.nls.uk/collections/manuscripts/col- lections/gaelic-manuscripts) (1 Aug. 2018). 12 See: Beatrix Färber, ‘Medical texts of Ireland, 1350–1600’ in CELT (https://celt.ucc.ie/ medical.html) (13 Mar. 2019); Irish Script on Screen (hereafter I.S.O.S.) (https://www.isos. dias.ie/english/index.html) (11 July 2018); ‘Early manuscripts at Oxford University’ in Oxford Digital Library (http://image.ox.ac.uk/) (17 July 2018). 13 Norman Moore, The history of the study of medicine in the British Isles (Oxford, 1908), pp 138–52. Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. IP address: 170.106.202.58, on 02 Oct 2021 at 14:21:03, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/ihs.2020.35 GRACE–Medicine in Gaelic Ireland and Scotland,c.1350–c.1750 203 deconstructions of the texts.14 In 1929, Winifred Wulff published her ground- breaking textual analysis, with an English translation, of an Irish rendition of the medieval Latin text Rosa Anglica, written by the English physician, John of Gaddesden (c.1280–1361), c.1314.15 This was, as Aoibheann Nic Dhonnchadha commented, ‘the authoritative introduction … to the vast and fascinating subject of early modern Irish medical texts’.16 Wulff translated several other medieval Irish tracts on plague (T.C.D., MS 1435),17 love sickness (R.I.A., MS 23 F 19)18 and gynaecology (R.I.A., MS 23 F 19).19 Many authors have since written about medieval medicine and the Gaelic heredi- tary physicians.20 Nollaig Ó Muraíle identified over fifty hereditary medical kin- dreds practising in Ireland and Scotland during the late medieval period.21 Charlie Dillon referred to the centres where medical study and scribal activity was carried out as ‘medical schools’.22 Áine Sheehan studied the medical families in the context of the other Gaelic professional elites, especially the poets and the brehons. She showed that the physicians, whose services were always in demand, fared better than the others following the collapse of the Gaelic world in the seventeenth century.23 While analyses of individual texts were provided by 14 C. P.Meehan, P.W. Joyce, R. Marlay Blake and Michael Moloney identified many of the hereditary Irish medical families in their respective works: C. P. Meehan, The rise and fall of the Irish Franciscan monasteries and memoirs of the Irish hierarchy (5th ed., Dublin, 1877), pp 447–8; P. W. Joyce, A social history of ancient Ireland (London, 1903), pp 597–625; R. Marlay Blake, ‘Folk lore, with some account of the ancient Gaelic leeches and the state of the art of medicine in ancient Erin’ in Journal of the County Louth Archaeological Society, iv, no. 3 (1918), pp 217–25; M. F. Moloney, Irish ethno-botany (Dublin, 1919), pp 51–72. 15 Winifred Wulff (ed.), Rosa Anglica seu Rosa medicinae Johannis Anglici: an early mod- ern Irish translation of a section of the mediaeval medical text-book of John of Gaddesden (Irish Texts Society, xxv, London, 1929), pp xiv–xix. 16 Aoibheann Nic Dhonnchadha,‘The Irish Rosa Anglica, manuscripts and structure’ in L. P. Ó Murchú (ed.), Rosa Anglica: reassessments (Irish Texts Society, subsidary series, xxviii, Dublin, 2016), pp 114–97. 17 Winifred Wulff, ‘Tract on the plague’ in Ériu, x (1928), pp 143–54. 18 Winifred Wulff, ‘De amore hereos’ in Ériu, xi (1932), pp 174–81. 19 Winifred Wulff, ‘A mediaeval handbook of gynaecology […]’, ed. Beatrix Färber, in CELT (https://celt.ucc.ie//published/G600011/index.html) (18 July 2019). 20 J. F. Fleetwood, The history of medicine in Ireland (Dublin, 1983), pp 20–31; Francis Shaw, ‘Medicine in Ireland in medieval times’ in William Doolin and Oliver Fitzgerald (eds), What’s past is prologue: a retrospect of Irish medicine (Dublin, 1952), pp 10–14; Francis Shaw, ‘Irish medical men and philosophers’ in Brian Ó Cuív (ed.), Seven centuries of Irish learning (2nd ed., Cork, 1971), pp 75–86; M.
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