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

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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 knowledge 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 medical 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, hereditary 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 provides 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 manuscript 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

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 scribal abbreviations and lack of English translations hampered detailed analyses of the texts until recently. While Sir Norman Moore appreciated that the Gaelic manuscripts 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 manuscripts in the National Library of Scotland’ (https://www.nls.uk/collections/manuscripts/collections/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 hereditary physicians.20 Nollaig Ó Muraíle identiﬁed over ﬁfty hereditary medical kindreds 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 modern 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. Dunlevy, ‘The medical families of medieval Ireland’ in Doolin & Fitzgerald (eds), What’s past is prologue, pp 15–22; Richard Hayes, ‘Irish medical links with the continent’ in ibid., pp 23–8; Nicholls, Gaelic & Gaelicised Ireland, p. 92; Brian Ó Cuív, ‘The Irish language in the early modern period’ in T. W. Moody, F. X. Martin and F. J. Byrne (eds), A new history of Ireland, iii: Early modern Ireland, 1534–1691 (Oxford, 1976), pp 518–20. 21 Nollaig Ó Muraíle, ‘The hereditary medical families of Gaelic Ireland’ in Ó Murchú (ed.), Rosa Anglica: reassessments,pp57–84. 22 Charlie Dillon, ‘Medical practice and Gaelic Ireland’ in James Kelly and Fiona Clark (eds), Ireland and medicine in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries (Farnham, 2010), pp 32–52. 23 M. Á. Sheehan, ‘Law, poetry and medicine: the literate professionals in autonomous Gaelic Ireland, c.1250–c.1630’ (Ph.D. thesis, University College Cork, 2016); Áine

Paul Walsh,24 Shawn Sheehan25 and James Carney,26 it was the recent work of Aoibheann Nic Dhonnchadha,27 Eithne Ní Ghallchobhair28 and Deborah Hayden29 that established the uniqueness of the Irish translations. They were not, as was originally supposed, slavish copies of the originals, but selective compilations based on creative adaptions of the original texts.30 Thus, as Nessa Ní Shéaghdha has suggested, copying the texts was not merely an intellectual exercise, but a gleaning of the information contained therein with a view to its practical application.31 The medical texts also represent a major resource for the study of late medieval Irish. Whitley Stokes, Lilian Duncan and Winfred Wulff all noted the lexicograph- ical importance of the texts and Wulff was impressed with the ability of the scribes 32 to translate technical terms from Latin into Irish. Liam MacMathúna found that native Irish terms with a provenance back to the Old Irish period (600–900) were used frequently by the scribes to represent novel medical concepts in the texts; a new vocabulary was not required to express the medical terms of the Latin exem- plars.33 Nessa Ní Shéaghdha and Charlie Dillon noted that the medical texts, unlike other contemporary writings, were written in a distinctive style of early-modern

Sheehan, ‘Locating the Gaelic medical families in Elizabethan Ireland’ in John Cunningham (ed.), Early modern Ireland and the world of medicine (Manchester, 2019), pp 20–38. 24 Paul Walsh discussed two transcriptions by Risteard Ó Conchubhair (R.I.A., MS 3 C 19) and Corc Óg Ó Cadhle (R.I.A., MS 24 P 14) of an Irish translation of Bernard of Gordon’s (c.1258–1320) Lilium medicinae: Paul Walsh, Gleanings from Irish manuscripts (2nd ed., Dublin, 1933), pp 123–81. 25 Shawn Sheahan (ed.), An Irish version of Gualterus de Dosibus (Washington D.C., 1938). 26 Séamus Ó Ceithearniagh, Regimen na sláinte: Regimen sanitatis Magnini Mediolanensis (3 vols, Dublin, 1942–4). The Regimen sanitatis (c.1330) of Magnius of Milan appears in a number of Irish manuscripts (R.I.A., MS 24 P 26; R.I.A., MS 12 Q 4; T.C.D., MS H 2 13). 27 Aoibheann Nic Dhonnchadha is the acknowledged expert on the surviving Irish medical texts. See: Nic Dhonnchadha ‘Early Modern Irish medical writings’,pp35–9; eadem, ‘Irish medical writing, 1400–1600’ in Angela Bourke et al. (eds), The Field Day anthology of Irish writing, iv: Irish women’s writing and traditions (Cork, 2002), pp 341–57; eadem, ‘Medical writing in Irish’ in J. B. Lyons (ed.), 2000 years of Irish medicine (Dublin, 2000), pp 21–6; eadem, ‘Téacs ó scoil leighis Achaidh Mhic Airt’ in Ossory, Laois and Leinster, i (2004), pp 50–75; eadem, ‘The medical school of Aghmacart, Queen’s County’ in Ossory, Laois and Leinster, ii (2006), pp 11–43; eadem, ‘On stretching and yawning’ in Ossory, Laois and Leinster, iii (2008), pp 237–49; eadem, ‘The “Book of the O’Lees” and other medical manuscripts and astronomical tracts’ in Bernadette Cunningham, Siobhán Fitzpatrick and Petra Schnabel (eds), Treasures of the Royal Irish Academy Library (Dublin, 2009), pp 81–91; eadem,‘The Irish Rosa Anglica’,pp114–97. 28 Eithne Ní Ghallchobhair (ed.), Anathomia Gydo (London, 2014). 29 Deborah Hayden, ‘Observations on the “doors of death” in a medieval Irish catechism’ in Ó Murchú (ed.), Rosa Anglica: reassessments,pp26–56. 30 Ibid.; Jason Harris, ‘Latin learning and Irish physicians, c.1350–c.1610’ in Ó Murchú (ed.), Rosa Anglica: reassessments,pp1–25. 31 Nessa Ní Shéaghdha, ‘Translations and adaptions into Irish’ in Celtica, xvi (1984), pp 107–24. 32 Whitley Stokes, ‘Three Irish medical glossaries’ in Archiv für celtische Lexikographie, i (1900), pp 325–47; Lilian Duncan, ‘A treatise on fevers’ in Revue Celtique, xlix (1932), pp 1–90; Wulff (ed.), Rosa Anglica, p. xiii. 33 Liam MacMathúna, ‘Terminology in Rosa Anglica’ in idem (ed.), Rosa Anglica: reassessments,pp57–86.

Irish reflecting the spoken language; many of the texts were transcribed from dic- tation.34 Thus, ‘Gaelic joined Greek, Arabic and Latin as one of only four lan- guages in which this body of medical knowledge was formally and systematically studied and taught’.35 While a knowledge of Latin was essential for translation, Jason Harris observed that the later medical scribes ‘were not con- cerned to employ standard Latin orthography, most likely because they did not know it’ and that by the end of the fifteenth century the majority of Irish physicians were out of step with contemporary spoken and written Latin.36 This lack of famil- iarity with Latin may account for the absence of any Gaelic translations of later medical innovators such as Andreas Vesalius (1514–64) or William Harvey (1578–1657); it may also explain the observation that ‘Gaelic medicine remained at the conservative wing of the European medical spectrum’.37 Samuel Johnson dismissed ‘the whole [Gaelic Scots] nation’ as ‘illiterate’, observing that there ‘is not … an Erse manuscript a hundred years old’.38 He would have been amazed to learn of ‘a great mass of Gaelic scientific writing lying unknown’ to the English-speaking world.39 Scottish scholars generally refer to the language of the medieval texts as ‘Gaelic’, but this is the same language as ‘Irish’ which was spoken in Ireland at the time.40 Thus, physicians travelling between Ireland and Scotland would have effortlessly understood each other. In this article the terms ‘Gaelic’ and ‘Irish’ are used interchangeably. In the early twentieth century George MacKay, Donald MacKinnon, John Comrie and Hugh Cameron Gillies all wrote of the Gaelic medical kindreds and their manuscripts in Scotland.41 Derick S. Thompson in discussing the Scottish learned professions argued that, as the Gaelic chiefs lost their temporal power, the hereditary physicians became ‘almost the ultimate custodians of the old learning and the old libraries’.42 While a chief’s requirement for an archivist or judge disappeared with his rule, he still had need of a physician. Thompson identified three major medical dynasties in Scotland (MacBeath, MacLachlan and MacConacher) and several minor ones that survived into the eighteenth century. The Clann Meic-bethad (MacBheathadh,

34 Ní Shéaghdha, ‘Translations and adaptions into Irish’, pp 107–24; Dillon, ‘Medical practice and Gaelic Ireland’,pp32–52. 35 Bannerman, The Beatons, p. 97. 36 Harris, ‘Latin learning and Irish physicians’,pp1–25. 37 Bannerman, The Beatons, p. 91. 38 Samuel Johnson, A journey to the Western Islands of Scotland, a new edition (London, 1791), p. 260. 39 H. C. Gillies, Regimen sanitatis, the rule of health: a Gaelic medical manuscript of the early sixteenth century or perhaps older (Glasgow, 1911), p. 6. 40 The late-medieval Gaelic world extended in an arc from the south-western tip of Ireland through the Western Isles into Scotland above the Highland line. Independent clan-based lordships shared a common language, law and culture. See: Christopher Maginn, ‘Gaelic Ireland’s English frontiers in the late middle ages’ in Proc. R.I.A., sect. c, cx (2010), pp 73–190. 41 George MacKay, ‘Ancient Gaelic medical manuscripts’ in Caledonian Medical Journal, ii (1904), pp 34–44; MacKinnon, A descriptive catalogue,pp5–71; O’Grady, Catalogue of Irish manuscripts, i, 262–3; J. D. Comrie, History of Scottish medicine to 1860 (London, 1927), pp 22–5; Gillies, Regimen sanitatis, pp 1–16. 42 D. S. Thompson, ‘Gaelic learned orders and literati in medieval Scotland’ in Scottish Studies, xii (1968), pp 57–78

MacBeath, Beaton, Bethune) was the dominant Scottish medical kindred for over 400 years and the subject of an extensive study by John Bannerman.43

In the late-medieval Gaelic world, physicians received beneﬁts appropriate to their status as members of the professional class.44 They held hereditary tenure of lands (lucht tighe) of approximately 250 acres in return for providing medical care to their aristocratic patrons.45 In Argyll in the sixteenth century the McLea physicians had ﬁve merklands, approximately 175 acres, from the Lamonts of Inveryn.46 The O’Sheil physicians in Offaly held lands in Ballyshiel, a townland of 228 acres, while the Ó Nialláins and the O’Cassidys had 240 and 315 acres in Clare and Fermanagh, respectively.47 In 1600 the MacCarthy Mór in Cork provided the Dunleavy physicians with three ploughlands, approximately 380 acres.48 Patrick McDonogh Oge O’Connor, hereditary physician, was listed as a native plantation grantee in Laois in 1626–32 with 1,246 acres,49 while in 1386 the Scottish king Robert II granted the 100,000 acre island of Jura to Ferchar Lighiche.50 The inheritance of these lands was by tanistry rather than primogeniture. Although the Ó Conchubhair succession at Aghmacart in Laois was from father to son for three generations from 1500, it was not necessarily to the eldest son. Similarly, the lands of the MacBeath physicians in Mull were inherited through a kin-based system throughout the seventeenth century.51 Tanistry was traditional in the Gaelic world, as expressed by Risteard Ó Conchubhair in 1590 in relation to a medical manuscript he had transcribed (R.I.A., MS 3 C 19): ‘Also I bequeath

43 Bannerman, The Beatons. 44 Ibid., p. 83. 45 Dillon, ‘Medical practice and Gaelic Ireland’,pp39–52; Elizabeth Fitzpatrick, ‘Gaelic service kindreds and the landscape identity of lucht tighe’ in Campbell, Fitzpatrick & Horning (eds), Becoming and belonging in Ireland, pp 167–88. 46 A merkland was valued at one merk (mark), an old Scots coin worth 13s. 4d. A ploughland, carucate or ploughgate, was the area ploughed by an eight-oxen plough team in a year, anything from 60 to 180 acres. In Scotland a ploughgate, approximately 104 acres, was valued at 40s.; thus, a merkland was 35 acres. See: ‘Scots phrases’ in 2012 act registration manual (https://rosdev.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/2ARM/pages/58690463/Scots+Phrases) (22 July 2018); Thompson, ‘Gaelic learned orders and literati in medieval Scotland’,p.65;Paul MacCotter, Medieval Ireland, territorial, political and economic divisions (Dublin, 2008), p. 25. 47 Joyce, A social history of ancient Ireland, pp 601–2; Brian Ó Dálaigh, ‘Doctors Donnell and James Neylon and the O’Briens of Thomond, 1530–1599’ in The Other Clare, xv (1991), pp 15–19; ‘Farrancassidy’ in Placenames Database of Ireland (https://www. logainm.ie/en/60527) (22 July 2018). 48 Other professionals holding lands from MacCarthy Mór in 1600 were: ‘Hagens (brehons), 3 ploughlands’ (380 acres), ‘O dallies (rimors), 2 ploughlands’ (240 acres) and ‘O donins (croniclers), ½ ploughland’ (60 acres) (W. F. Butler, Gleanings from Irish history (London, 1925), p. 117). 49 David Edwards, ‘The MacGiollaPhádraigs of Upper Ossory, 1532–1641’ in P. G. Lane and William Nolan (eds), Laois: history and society (Dublin, 1999), pp 327–75. 50 Thompson, ‘Gaelic learned orders and literati in medieval Scotland’,pp57–78. 51 Bannerman, The Beatons, p. 86.

possession of this volume in conformity with the custom … it shall not be given to the descendant who is oldest in years or richest unless he be also the most learned’.52 Tanistry would obviously make it easier for the kindred to ensure that at least one member of the extended family would be a trained physician, thereby justifying the family’s continued possession of the hereditary lands. In the early seventeenth century, the Flemish scientist, Johann Baptista van Helmont (1579– 1644), observed that:

the noblemen of Ireland grant a ﬁeld to a member of their household who takes care of their health … This person will have a book left to him by his ancestors, stuffed full of remedies. So whoever inherits the book inherits the ﬁeld … this tome outlines the symptoms of disease along with home- grown remedies …53

Nollaig Ó Muraíle identiﬁed over ﬁfty Gaelic medical kindreds.54 The etymol- ogy of some of the names points to a long tradition of practice; medicine had emerged as a distinct profession in Ireland by the eighth century at the latest.55 ‘Mac an Leagha’ (McLea) means ‘the son of the physician’ (líaig, ‘leech’), ‘Ó hÍceadha’ (Hickey) translates to ‘descendant of a healer’ (íccaid, ‘healer’) while ‘MacBheathadh’ means the ‘son of life’ (betha, ‘life’).56 Evidence that new medical lineages could be established is provided by the O’Meara and Ó Nialláin families; members of these traditionally ecclesiastical kindreds became physicians to the Butlers of Ormond and O’Briens of Thomond in the early seventeenth century.57 The Beaton family was pre-eminent in Scottish medicine for 400 years, becoming physicians to both the lords of the Isles and the kings of Scots.58 They descended from a MacBeath follower of the daughter of an Ó Catháin from Ulster when she married Angus Óg of the Isles, c.1300.59 A Beaton physician accompanied James VI of Scotland to London on the latter’s accession to the English throne in 1603 and Fergus Beaton from Ballenabe in Islay (d. c.1628) held a royal appointment from Charles I.60 A female Scottish physician, Christine Leche, successfully treated a servant of the king in 1443, indicating that women practised medicine in the Gaelic world.61 Scottish Gaelic doctors were much appreciated. In 1536 the Lowlands historian, Hector Boece, wrote: ‘Beside mony craftis and science, quhilkis thay have translatit in their

52 Walsh, Gleanings from Irish manuscripts, p. 139. 53 Johann Baptista van Helmont, ‘Confessio authoris’ in idem, Opera omnia (Frankfurt, 1682), p. 13; Jason Harris, ‘Latin learning and Irish physicians’,pp1–25. 54 Ó Muraíle, ‘The hereditary medical families of Gaelic Ireland’,pp85–113. 55 Nic Dhonnchadha, ‘Irish medical writing, 1400–1600’, p. 34. 56 Gregory Toner, Máire Ní Mhaonaigh, Sharon Arbuthnot, Marie-Luise Theuerkauf and Dagmar Wodtko (eds), eDIL: Electronic dictionary of the Irish language (hereafter eDIL), s.v., líaigh (http://www.dil.ie/30125) (22 June 2017); s.v., íccaid (http://www.dil.ie/27151) (22 June 2017); s.v., betha (http://www.dil.ie/5779) (22 June 2017); Dillon, ‘Medical practice and Gaelic Ireland’,pp39–52; Nicholls, Gaelic & Gaelicised Ireland, p. 92. 57 Sheehan, ‘Law, poetry and medicine’, p. 161. 58 Bannerman, The Beatons,pp7–80. 59 Thompson, ‘Gaelic learned orders and literati in medieval Scotland’,pp57–78; Bannerman, The Beatons, p 82. 60 Bannerman, The Beatons, p. 82. 61 David Hamilton, The healers, a history of medicine in Scotland (Edinburgh, 2003), p. 23.

awin tongue, thay profess maist the science of medcinary, and ar richt excellent in it’.62 The lack of a university within Ireland in the late medieval period forced Gaelic medical students to travel abroad to gain degrees.63 Johannes de Kylloylac O Kannin from Meath, was a bachelor of medicine in Montpellier in 1330.64 It is likely that a small number of Gaelic physicians encountered the classical Latin texts for the first time in universities such as Montpellier and Paris and translated them into Irish. Two prominent translators, Cormac Mac Duinnshléibhe ( fl. 1459) and Tadhg Ó Cuinn ( fl. 1400–15), were described as basillér a fisígecht (bachelor in physic), but from which universities is unknown.65 The Annals of the Four Masters recorded the death of Donnchadh Duinnshléibhe, a ‘doctor of medicine’, in 1527.66 James Neylon, a member of the Ó Nialláin medical kindred from Clare, graduated in medicine at the University of Oxford in 1549, while Owen O’Sheil returned to Ireland with his doctor’s degree in 1620 having studied in Louvain, Padua, Rome and Paris.67 The Gaelic word ollamh, originally used to denote the highest grade of file or poet, was later applied to any expert in art or science, a professor.68 While few had university degrees, many Gaelic doctors were referred to as ollamh leighis. Maeleachlainn Mac an Leagha ( fl. 1500), described as ollam in da Mac Donnchaid, was the official physician to two MacDonogh chiefs in Sligo.69 Donnchadh Óg Ó Conchubhair ( fl. 1581–1611) was priomh ollamh or chief physician to Finghin Mac Giolla Phádraig (d. 1613), third Baron Upper Ossory.70 In Scotland the title ardollamhnachd referred to the chief physician of the MacLeans of Duart. From the middle of the sixteenth century the title ollamh was almost exclusively associated with medicine; in 1541 it was understood without further elaboration that Fergus ollamh of Ileach (Islay) was a physician.71 As pointed out by Áine Sheehan, some Gaelic doctors were readily accepted by the English of Ireland.72 In 1341 William Ouhynnouvan (Ó Ceannabháin), ‘the King’s Surgeon’, was awarded ‘the weirs of Lymerick in Ireland’ for his good service to the king overseas; he was also afforded the protection of English common

62 ‘Besides many crafts and sciences, which they have translated into their own tongue, they profess most the science of medicine, and are right excellent in it’: John Bellenden (trans.), The history and chronicles of Scotland written in Latin by Hector Boece (2 vols, Edinburgh, 1821), i, p. lix. 63 Katherine Simms, ‘Gaelic culture and society’ in Brendan Smith (ed.), The Cambridge history of Ireland, i: 600–1550 (Cambridge, 2018), pp 415–40. 64 Shaw, ‘Medicine in Ireland in medieval times’,p.11. 65 In a colophon Tadhg Ó Cuinn stated that his Materia medica (T.C.D., MS 1343) derived from the ‘united studium of the doctors of Montpellier’, indicating that his degree may have been from Montpellier (Tadhg Ó Cuinn, ‘An Irish materia medica’, ed. Beatrix Färber, in CELT (https://celt.ucc.ie//published/G600006/index.html) (2 July 2019)). 66 A.F.M., v, 1388–9. 67 Ó Cuív, ‘The Irish language in the early modern period’, p. 519; Ó Dálaigh, ‘Doctors Donnell and James Neylon and the O’Briens of Thomond, 1530–1599’,pp15–19; Wulff (ed.), Rosa Anglica, p. xlvii. 68 eDIL, s.v., ollam (dil.ie/33808) (26 July 2018). 69 Paul Walsh, ‘An Irish medical family – Mac an Leagha’ in Colm Ó Lochlainn (ed.), Irish men of learning: studies by Father Paul Walsh (Dublin, 1947), p. 210. 70 Nic Dhonnchadha, ‘Irish medical writing, 1400–1600’, p. 342. 71 Bannerman, The Beatons, pp 2, 84. 72 Sheehan, ‘Locating the Gaelic medical families in Elizabethan Ireland’,pp20–38.

law, ‘notwithstanding that he is by birth of the Irish nation’.73 Similarly, Denis Collier, ‘phisician and surgien’, was admitted a citizen of Dublin in 1575 for attending to the mayor and others during an outbreak of plague.74 In 1580 ‘Nicholas Hykie, doctor of physic’, was employed by the city at an annual salary of ‘ten pounds, lawfull mony of Irland’.75 William Kelly, a surgeon, ‘in consideration of his long service in Ireland, France and Scotland in her Majesty’s wars’ and ‘for his perfection of science’ was awarded a pension of 2s. per day in 1587.76 The Butlers of Ormond employed Dermot O’Meara and later his son Edmond as their personal physicians throughout most of the seventeenth century.77 In 1606 Sir John Davies observed that Catholic priests in Clonmel escaped arrest under penal laws by residing ‘in the houses of gentlemen and noblemen under the name of surgeons and physicians’.78 The protection the physicians enjoyed among Old and New English patrons may account for the survival of so many medical manuscripts from the 1300–1650 period.79 One of the chief activities of Gaelic medical professionals was the translation and transcription of Latin medical texts.80 These works encapsulated the tenets of classical Greek and Roman medicine which had been preserved in Arabic texts. By the eleventh century this ancient knowledge was being translated back into Latin in southern Europe.81 Gaelic medical practice was based on compilations of Irish translations of these texts rather than personal observation and experience with patients. According to John Bannerman ‘little originality was displayed and few advances made’,82 while Nessa Ní Shéaghdha concluded that ‘reading was thought the chief source of medical knowledge’.83 However, considerable knowledge of locally grown herbs existed which predated the arrival of Latin learning. Bretha crólige, a medical law text from the eighth century, stated that the purpose of a gar- den was the production of herbs for the sick and referred to honey, garlic and celery as medicinal herbs.84 Moreover, as noted previously, an Irish vocabulary already existed to represent the medical concepts of the texts being translated.85 As in the Gaelic law schools, the scribal medical work took place in secular medical schools under the patronage of a ruling family. Sometimes the writing was done as the physician travelled, visiting and treating well-to-do patrons. Risteard Ó Conchubhair from Aghmacart in Laois journeyed through Kildare, Kilkenny,

73 Cal. pat. rolls, 1340–43,pp84–5; Shaw, ‘Medicine in Ireland in medieval times’, p. 12. 74 J. T. Gilbert (ed.), Calendar of ancient records of Dublin (19 vols, Dublin, 1889–1944), ii, 102. 75 Ibid., ii, 146–7. 76 Cal. pat. rolls Ire., Eliz., ii, 122. 77 Sheehan, ‘Law, poetry and medicine’, pp 165–8; J. B. Lyons, Brief lives of Irish doctors (Dublin, 1978), p. 36. 78 ‘Observations made by Sir John Davys, attorney of Ireland, after a journey made by him in Munster’, [4 May 1606] (Cal. S.P., Ire., 1603–06, p. 476). 79 See: Ní Shéaghdha, ‘Translations and adaptions into Irish’, pp 107–24. 80 Nic Dhonnchadha, ‘Medical writing in Irish’,pp21–6; eadem, ‘Irish medical writing, 1400–1600’, pp 341–57. 81 Faith Wallis, Medieval medicine: a reader (Toronto, 2010), p. xxii; N. G. Siraisi, Medieval and early Renaissance medicine: an introduction to knowledge and practice (Chicago, 1990), pp 14–15. 82 Bannerman, The Beatons,pp90–3. 83 Ní Shéaghdha, ‘Translations and adaptions into Irish’, pp 107–24. 84 D. A. Binchy, ‘Bretha crólige’ in Ériu, xii (1938), pp 1–77. 85 MacMathúna, ‘Terminology in Rosa Anglica’,pp57–86.

Wexford, Carlow and Offaly between May and November 1590 while transcribing Bernard of Gordon’s Lilium medicinae (R.I.A., MS 3C 19).86 His hosts were the Gaelic Mac Giolla Phádraigs and Ó Moores, and the Old English Lyes, Birminghams, Fitzgeralds, Graces and Butlers.87 That a doctor could move seamlessly among these two antagonistic ethnic groups emphasises the high regard in which they were held. Similarly, between December 1611 and January 1613 Angus Beaton from Husabost in the Isle of Skye transcribed a 476-page manuscript (N.L.S., Adv. MS 72.2.10) for his teacher Duncan Ó Conchubhair (1571–1647) as they travelled around Lorn from Lismore to Ardnacriosh, Muckairn, Dunollie, Island Stalker and Ardchonnel.88 Angus pleaded with the reader not to blame him for his poor handwriting as it was the first book he had ever written.89 Another example of peripatetic writing is provided by a colophon in B.L., MS Arundel 333 written c.1514 where Donnchadh (O’Ahiarn) states that he wrote the manuscript in the house of John the Scot in either Cork or Clare.90 Good information survives for the Ó Conchubhair medical school at Aghmacart, which flourished from 1500 to 1611 under the patronage of the Mac Giolla Phádraigs of Upper Ossory.91 Six members of the family across four generations practised medicine, the most important of whom was Donnchadh Óg Ó Conchubhair ( fl. 1581–1611), priomh ollamh leighis, ‘the best of doctors in his own time – and that without leaving Ireland to study’.92 The inference is that students often went abroad to study medicine, but, equally, that a good medical education was attainable in Ireland at this period. The other doctors associated with the school were Donnchadh Óg’s grandfather (Giolla Pádraig) who wrote a medical text c.1500 (N.L.I., MS G 12), Donnchadh Óg’s father (Donnchadh Liath, d. 1562), brother (Conchubhair, fl. 1566) and son (also Giolla Pádraig), as well as Risteard Ó Conchubhair (1561–1625) who was a relative and a pupil at the school. Risteard Ó Conchubhair’s surviving manuscripts are the sources for information about the school. Two Connacht students attended: Iollann Máig Bheatha and Feargach Ó Fearghusa, while Niall Mac Iomhair and the aforementioned Donnchadh (Duncan) Albanach Ó Conchubhair came from Scotland. Also present in 1596 were Cathal Ó Duinnshléibhe, the scribe of R.I.A., MS 23 N 16, Tadhg Mac Giolla Mártan and someone called Domhnall. Members of the Leinster medical families of Mac Caisín and Ó Cuileamhain were also connected with the school.93 We can surmise, therefore, that the school attracted not only students of the local

86 Bernard of Gordon (c.1258–1320), a practising physician at Montpellier, published his most inﬂuential work Practica, seu Lilium medicinae in 1305 (Nic Dhonnchadha, ‘Irish medical writing, 1400–1600, p. 356). 87 Dillon, ‘Medical practice and Gaelic Ireland’,pp39–52; Nic Dhonnchadha, ‘Irish medical writing, 1400–1600’, pp 356–7. 88 Donnachadh (Duncan) Albanach Ó Conchubhair had studied at Aghmacart before returning to Scotland in 1600 as physician to the MacDougal of Dunollie (Nic Dhonnchadha, ‘The medical school of Aghmacart’, p. 29). 89 Bannerman, The Beatons,pp98–9; MacKinnon, A descriptive catalogue,pp64–5. 90 ‘Ocus mice Donnchadh do sgríb so ocus a dtig Eoin albanach atú fein ocus Domnall ó Leiginn.’ (‘And it is I, Donnchadh, that have written this; and in Scottish John’s house I am, myself and Domnall Ó Leiginn.’)O’Grady, Catalogue of Irish manuscripts, i, 238. 91 Nic Dhonnchadha, ‘The medical school of Aghmacart’,pp11–43. 92 Ibid., p. 16. 93 Ibid., pp 11–43.

Table 1. List of works transcribed or translated at the Ó Conchubhair medical school, Aghmacart, 1590–1600.

Original author Title Manuscript reference

Bernard of Gordon Liber pronosticorum R.I.A., MS 3 C 19; N.L.S., Adv. MS 73.1.22 Lilium medicinae R.I.A., MS 3 C 19; N.L.S., Adv. MS 73.1.22; N.L.I., MS G 12 De decem ingeniis curandorum R.I.A., MS 3 C 19; N.L.I., MS G 12 morborum Valescus de Taranta Practica (part of Book 7 ‘On R.I.A., MS 3 C 19 Saphaphati’)* Nicolaus Betrucius Collectorium (chapter ‘on R.I.A., MS 23 N 16 stretching and yawning’)*† Valerius Cordus Dispensatorium N.L.I., MS G 414; T.C.D., MS 1437 Petrus de Argellata Chirurgia N.L.S., Adv. MS 73.1.22 Anonymous Liber pronosticorum of Hippocrates R.I.A., MS 23 N 16; N.L.I., MS G 453 commentary Aegidius Corboliensis Carmina de urinarum iudiciis R.I.A., MS 23 N 16; N.L.I., MS G 453 De pulsibus N.L.I., MS G 453 Johannes Damascenus Aphorismi N.L.I., MS G 453; B.L., MS Eg. 159 Johannitius Isagoge R.I.A., MS 23 N 16 (Hunayn ibn Ishaq) John of Gaddesden Rosa Anglia N.L.I., MS G 12 Lanfranc of Milan Chirurgia magna N.L.I., MS G 12 Geraldus de Solo De febribus N.L.I., MS G 12

*Only two works were translated, both by Donnchadh Óg Ó Conchubair, ollamh leighis, the head of the school. †Donnchadha Óg added a section not in the original text about ‘diversion’. Sources: Nic Dhonnchadha, ‘The medical school of Aghmacart’,pp11–43; Irish Script on Screen (I.S.O.S.) (https://www.isos.dias.ie/english/index.html) (27 June 2020); Donald MacKinnon, A descriptive catalogue of Gaelic manuscripts, p. 273; O’Grady, Catalogue of Irish manuscripts, i, 280–5.

hereditary medical families in Leinster, but also from as far away as Ulster and Scotland. The most comprehensive record of scribal activity from a Gaelic medical school is from Aghmacart, but it is likely that similar work was done elsewhere of which only fragments remain. Extracts from many texts were compiled into handbooks for ease of use.94 Table 1 demonstrates the extent of the work undertaken at Aghmacart. Most of the texts were transcriptions of previously translated Latin texts by unknown translators. However, the priomh ollamh Donnchadh Óg Ó Conchubhair translated a text on a skin disease called ‘sahaphati’ (R.I.A., MS 3 C 19)

94 Examples include: John MacBeath’s manuscript (B.L., Add. MS 15,582); University of Edinburgh, MS La. III 21; the Book of the O’Sheils (R.I.A., MS 23 K 42); and the Book of the O’Lees (R.I.A., MS 23 P 10 (ii)).

and another ‘on stretching and yawning’ (R.I.A., MS 23 N 16).95 As noted above, sometimes the work which was being transcribed was dictated to the scribe by another person. For example, Cathal Ó Duinnshléibhe wrote in January 1592 that his father (dháid) William had dictated the text to him.96 Learning by rote was a common practice. The English Jesuit priest, Edmund Campion (1540–81), who stayed in Ireland from August 1570 to June 1571, left an uncomplimentary eye-witness account of the medical and law schools of ‘the mere Irish’:

they speak Latin like a vulgar language, learned in their common Schools of Leach-craft and Law … conning by rote the Aphorisms of Hypocrates, and Civil Instructions … I have seen them where they kept schools, ten in some one chamber, groveling upon couches of straw, their books at their noses, themselves lying ﬂat prostrate, and so to chant out their lessons by piecemeal, being the most part lusty fellows of twenty ﬁve years and upwards.97

However, as Jason Harris has pointed out, Campion was residing with the Old English Stanihurst family in Dublin at the time and his comments probably reflect their prejudices against the Gaelic Irish.98 Richard Stanihurst (1547–1618) later added his own diatribe against Gaelic doctors in his book De rebus in Hibernia gestis: ‘empiriks … plainly untaught and completely uneducated in all matters of surgery … they become doctors by heredity, not by learning. Having learned to recite from memory Hippocrates’ aphorism “Life is short, art is long”, they con- sider themselves sufficiently brilliantly educated.’ He also referred to their ‘ancient murky manuscripts, which are written in Irish and punctuated with many emenda- tions’. Any cures or healing they might achieve ‘ought to be attributed to the effi- ciency of nature rather than the use of these empiricks who lack all theoretical skill’.99 Similarly, Martin Martin from Skye referred to a fellow islander as ‘the illiterate empiric, Neil Beaton’ who became a physician ‘without the advantage of education’.100 Thus, not everyone was impressed by the scholarship of the Gaelic physicians.

III

Van Helmot believed that the Gaelic medical manuscripts contained local cures, but for the most part they were Gaelic translations of medieval Latin texts. While the scribes often added interesting colophons to the text, they did not describe clin- ical cases in any detail nor treatments given to speciﬁc patients. Winifred Wulff commented that ‘one is struck by the wide knowledge of the medieval physicians,

95 Nic Dhonnchadha, ‘The medical school of Aghmacart’,pp11–43. 96 Ibid. 97 Edward Campion, Two bokes of the histories of Ireland, ed. A. F. Vossen (Assen, 1963), pp 25–6. 98 Harris, ‘Latin learning and Irish physicians’,pp1–25. 99 Great deeds in Ireland: Richard Stanihurst’s De rebus in Hiberniae gestis, eds and trans. John Barry and Hiram Morgan (Cork, 2013), p. 127. 100 Martin Martin, A description of the Western Islands of Scotland (London, 1716), p. 197.

as well as by their lack of any great powers of observation’.101 Similarly, Standish O’Grady wrote that the Gaelic physicians were ‘staunch Arabians’, adding that ‘the Irish-writing leech was a scholastic … no observer and recorder, no rash intruder into the domain of research; but a book-builder, a compiler, an arranger’.102 Francis Shaw observed that, while the fourteenth century Gaelic doctors wrote in Irish, their learning was all borrowed.103 Although modern scholars have chal- lenged these views, nevertheless, the Gaelic medical texts contain few remedies that can be identified as being specifically local. A possible exception is a prosimetrum transcribed in 1509 by Conla Mac an Leagha (R.I.A., MSS 24 B 3, 23 N 29), which, while based in part on Latin sources, also makes reference to Dian Céacht, physician to the mythical Tuatha Dé Danann, and his children, Míach and Oirbea, as well as to the land of Ireland and its physicians.104 However, in this text, as Deborah Hayden has shown, the Irish translator or scribe occasionally substituted Dian Céacht’s name for that of Galen which appeared in the exemplar as the authoritative source.105 Thus, the Gaelic scribes were quite selective in what they copied, compil- ing manuscripts of different texts for their own use. Beatrix Färber commented on Tadhg Ó Cuinn’s An Irish materia medica (1415): ‘the text appears to be no slavish rendering of the voice of ancient authority, but a sensible selection of information believed to be of practical use’;106 the text contains a number of items for which no Latin source has been found indicating a local source for the knowledge. Similarly Angus Beaton’s big book (N.L.S., Adv. MS 72 2 10) was a compilation of several sources as, in the words of Donald MacKinnon, ‘Dr O’Conacher had evi- dently the idea of compressing a small medical library into one volume’.107 Some compilations were commissioned for use by doctors as convenient handbooks, re-emphasising the practical rather than theoretical nature of the texts; the staining of the manuscripts suggests that they were actually used as handbooks. In 1563 two Irish scribes, Dáibhi Ó Cearnaigh and ‘Cairbre’, assembled a compendium of texts (B.L., Add. MS 15,582) for the Scottish physician John McBeath. Described by Gillies as a vade mecum, it contains sections on health maintenance, humours, cupping, bloodletting, cautery, cutting for stone, abscesses, materia medica and recipes against various diseases.108 Part of another compilation with particular emphasis on urinalysis (University of Edinburgh, MS La. III, 21, ff 10-85) was also prepared for John McBeath by Caipre Ó Cendamhain; in this text several pages were left blank to be filled in later ‘as further experience and knowledge might render desirable’.109 Two Irish medical manuals are the Book of the O’Sheils (R.I.A., MS 23 K 42) and the Book of the O’Lees (R.I.A., MS 23 P 10 (ii)). The seventeenth-century Book of the O’Sheils contains the Aphorisms and Prognostica of Hippocrates (c.460–c.370 B.C.), Aegidius’s

101 Wulff (ed.), Rosa Anglica, p. lvi. 102 O’Grady, Catalogue of Irish manuscripts, i, 171, 175. 103 Shaw, ‘Irish medical men and philosophers’, p. 78. 104 A prosimetrum is a text written in prose and verse (Aoibheann Nic Dhonnchadha, ‘An Irish medical treatsise on vellum and paper from the 16th century’ in Pádraig Ó Macháin (ed.), Paper and the paper manuscript (Cork, 2019), pp 111–25). 105 Deborah Hayden, ‘Attribution and authority in a medieval Irish medical compendium’ in Studia Hib., xlv (2019), pp 19–51. 106 Ó Cuinn, ‘An Irish materia medica’, ed. Färber. 107 MacKinnon, A descriptive catalogue, pp 64–5. 108 O’Grady, Catalogue of Irish manuscripts, i, 262–80; Gillies, Regimen sanitatis,p.8. 109 MacKinnon, A descriptive catalogue, pp 283–6.

(1140–1224) De urinis, Bernard of Gordon’s Lilium particula prima on fevers, with extracts from Valescus de Taranta ( fl. 1382), Galen (c.130–c.210) and Avicenna (c.980–1037).110 Dealing with a range of diseases, the fifteenth-century Book of the O’Lees is a highly organised, sophisticated treatise with forty-four tables divided into compartments containing the details of each disease under twelve headings including treatment and management.111 This book would have been an invaluable, easy-to-use resource for practising physicians who, at a glance, could see all the relevant features of a specific disease and its treatment. The scribe of the sole surviving Irish copy, which may have been composed c.1434, has been identified as Conall Ballach Mac Parthaláin ( fl. 1484).112 Pre-eminent among the Gaelic translators was Cormac Mac Duinnshléibhe ( fl. 1459) from Tír Chonaill who translated at least nine medical texts from Latin to Irish, including Bernard of Gordon’s hugely influential Lilium medicinae.113 Domhnall Albanach Ó Troighthigh used this text for his transcription written in Clare in 1482 (B.L., Eg. MS 89); the ‘Albanach’ again points to a Scottish connection.114 Three of Tadhg Ó Cuinn’s translations are extant and date from the early fifteenth century.115 A translation of Gaddesden’s Rosa Anglica from 1400 is attributed to the Clare physician Nicholas O’Hickey ( fl. 1403), but Winifred Wulff stated that ‘there is nothing in the MS to indicate who the scribe may have been’.116 Eoin Ó Callanáin ( fl. 1414), Donnchadh Óg Ó Conchubhair ( fl. 1586–1610) and Diarmaid Ó Sirideáin also translated works.117 The Irish physicians did not always translate verbatim from the Latin originals. Donnchadh Óg Ó Conchubhair added a section on ‘diversion’ not in the original to his copy of a section of the Collectorium by Niccoló Betruccio (d. 1347).118 He also added a chapter from Valescus de Taranta’s Philonium to the copy of Bernard of

110 Royal Irish Academy, ‘Gaelic medical manuscripts from the academy collections’ (https://www.ria.ie/gaelic-medical-manuscripts-academy-collections) (29 July 2018). 111 Nic Dhonnchadha, ‘The Book of the O’Lees’,pp81–91. 112 The Book of the O’Lees was a translation of the Latin text Tacuini aegritudinum et morborum ferme omnium corporis humani cum curis eorundem, itself a translation of Taqwim al-Abdan fi Dadbir al-Insan, an Arab text written by Ibn Jazlah of Baghdad (d. 1100) (Nic Dhonnchadha, ‘The Book of the O’Lees’,pp81–91; Tomás Ó Con Cheanainn, ‘Scríobhaí “Leabhar mhuintir Laidhe” agus “Rosa Anglica”’ in Éigse, xxxvii (2010), pp 112–18). 113 Other works he translated included: Bernard of Gordon’s Liber prognosticorum and De decem ingeniis curandorum morborum, the first part of Guy de Chauliac’s (1298–1368) Churgia magna (De anathomia), Gualterus (Walter) of Agilon’s(fl. 1250) De dosibus med- icinarum, and Thomas Aquinas’s (1225–74) On the secrets of nature (Nic Dhonnchadha, ‘Medical writing in Irish’, pp 217–20; eadem, ‘Irish medical writing, 1400–1600’, p. 356). 114 O’Grady, Catalogue of Irish manuscripts, i, 202. 115 These are: Almusór based on Geraldus de Solo’s(c.1335–60) Practica super nono Almansoris; Materia medica derived mostly from the Circa instans of Mathaeus Platearius ( fl.c.1150); and Colliget, based on the Compendium medicine of Gilbertus Anglicus (1180–1250) (Nic Dhonnchadha, ‘Irish medical writing, 1400–1600’, pp 356–7). 116 Wulff (ed.), Rosa Anglica, p. xxxiv. C. P. Meehan in 1877 was the first person to state that it was O’Hickey, but provided no evidence to support this claim (Meehan, The rise and fall of the Franciscan monasteries, pp 446–63). 117 Nic Dhonnchadha, ‘Medical writing in Irish’,pp21–6. 118 ‘Diversion’ was a technique believed to redirect the flow of humours from the deeper to the more superficial parts of the body, facilitating their expulsion (Wallis, Medieval medicine, p. 294; Hannah Newton, ‘“Nature Concocts & Expels”: the agents and processes of recovery from disease in early modern England’ in Social History of Medicine, xxviii, no. 3 (Aug.

Gordon’s Lilium medicinae that was being transcribed by one of his students.119 In Cormac Duinnshléibhe’s manuscript, Anathomia Gydo, a translation of Guy de Chauliac’s De anathomia, some sections of the Latin text were not translated into Irish.120 One fascinating omission was a detailed description of the order of dissection of a cadaver – abdomen, thorax, head, limbs – originally described by Mondino de’ Liuzzi (d. 1326) in Bologna.121 This scheme allowed for four separate dissections starting with the parts that would putrefy earliest.122 Thus, it seems likely that anatomical dissection was not an important component of Gaelic medical education. Extracts from other works not in the exemplar were also inserted into the text, two of which were from the Chirurgia of Lanfranc (c.1250– 1306).123 When translating Gaddesden’s Rosa Anglica, based in part on the Lilium medicinae, the translator liberally added extracts from the Lilium that Gaddesden had not used. Pádraig Ó Siaghail, in writing a section of the Book of the O’Sheils (R.I.A., MS 23 K 42) in 1657-8, added a reference to beer and whiskey as a cause of drunkenness among the Irish in his copy of the Lilium where the original only mentioned wine.124 Risteard Ó Conchubhair, in R.I.A., MS 3 C 19, com- plained that neither Bernard of Gordon nor Cormac Mac Duinnshléibhe, whose exemplar of Lilium medicinae he was copying, had condemned charms ( pisseoga) against sterility which would only be cured by repentance and leading a good Christian life.125 Medieval doctors believed that the movements of heavenly bodies inﬂuenced the inner workings of the human body. They used charts and images to check the posi- tions of the stars to calculate prognostically important ‘critical days’, and determine when and from which vein blood should be taken.126 A volvelle or rotula was a moveable circular astronomical device on a page for working out the position of the sun and moon in the zodiac. A number of Irish volvelles display the names of the signs of the zodiac, the planets, the months and numeral ﬁgures.127

2015), pp 465–86; Nic Dhonnchadha, ‘The medical school of Aghmacart’,pp11–43; Nic Dhonnchadha, ‘On stretching & yawning’, pp 237–49). 119 Harris ‘Latin learning and Irish physicians’,pp1–25. 120 Ní Ghallchobhair, ‘Anthomia Gydo’,pp1–3. 121 Following the decree of the Holy Roman Emperor, Frederick II (1194–1250), permit- ting human dissection, Mondino de Liuzzi (c.1270–1326), professor of surgery at Bologna, was the ﬁrst to perform a public dissection on an executed criminal in 1315 (Susan Strandring, ‘A brief history of topographical anatomy’ in Journal of Anatomy, ccxxix, no. 1 (July 2016), pp 32–62. 122 Andrew Cunningham, The anatomical renaissance (Aldershot, 1997), p. 47; Nic Dhonnchadha, ‘On stretching & yawning’, pp 240–41, note 5. 123 Guido Lanfranchi (Lanfranc) (c.1250–1306) was a prominent teacher of surgery in Paris where he wrote his book, Chirurgia magna: Harold Ellis, The Cambridge illustrated history of surgery (2nd ed., Cambridge, 2009), p. 28. 124 Nic Dhonnchadha ‘Early modern Irish medical writings’,pp35–9. 125 Winifred Wulff, ‘Contra incantationes’ in Ériu, xii (1938), pp 250–3. 126 Siraisi, Medieval and early Renaissance medicine, pp 133–40; Adrienne Albright, ‘Heavenly bodies: astrological medicine in Wellcome manuscript MS.40’ (http://blog.well- comelibrary.org/2013/08/heavenly-bodies-astrological-medicine-in-wellcome-manuscript- ms-40/) (18 July 2019). 127 Three medico-astronomical texts (R.I.A., MS B ii 1, R.I.A., MS 23 F 13 and Marsh’s Library, Z 2 2 1) are very similar, but only R.I.A., MS B ii 1 (p. 2) contains a volvelle. See: I.S.O.S. (https://www.isos.dias.ie/english/index.html) (25 June 2020). Two other very impressive volvelles are in an Irish manuscript in Corpus Christi College, Oxford (Corpus

Medieval physicians also used two other resources, the ‘zodiac man’, a chart depicting the parts of the body controlled by the various signs of the zodiac (melothesia), and the ‘vein or phlebotomy man’, which illustrated the precise vein that should be let (i.e., bled) for a particular problem.128 Thus bloodletting, which could be general or specific, was recommended only at particular times and from certain veins.129 While there is one extant copy of a Gaelic vein man (B.L., Add. MS 15,582),130 no Gaelic zodiac man survives, although it is likely that they existed as they were integral to medieval astrological medicine. Physicians also used charts depicting the colour of urine to help with diagnosis; the colour reflected the humoral balance in the body.131 Typically, a chart comprised images of twenty urine flasks, each of a different colour indicating a specific disorder. Only one Gaelic urine chart exists in University of Edinburgh, MS La. III. 21.132 Unlike more sophisticated charts, as in B.L., Harley MS 5311 (c.1406), where the actual colour is painted onto the image of the flask, in the Gaelic version a caption describing the colour and its significance is placed beside the image.133 Another illustration from an Irish medical text is a representation of the seven tunics and three humours of the eye surrounding a central lens (crystillina) in T.C.D., MS 1435.134 Images of a nasal speculum and a strange diagram of triangular, round and square shapes called ‘pledgets’, possibly wound pads, are also found.135 Given the long and laborious process of preparing vellum or parchment and the equally difficult task of making inks, it is not surprising that manuscripts were valu- able items.136 Twenty-two quaternions (176 folios or 352 pages) were used in creating a copy of Lilium medicinae (B.L., Eg. MS 89) in Clare in the fifteenth century. A note, dated 1500, requests a prayer for Gerald Fitzgerald, earl of Kildare (1456– 1513) who bought the manuscript for a score of cows (air fichit bo).137 ‘Sixty milk cows’ was the price for transcribing a copy of the Lilium medicinae (N.L.S., MS 2076) belonging to Fearchar Beaton of Husabost in the early sixteenth century.138 Fearchar valued his book so much ‘that when he trusted himself to a boat, in passing an arm of the sea … he sent his servant by land, for greater security with the Lilium

Christi College, MS 129, ff 11r–11v); R. M. Thompson, A descriptive catalogue of the medieval manuscripts of Corpus Christi College, Oxford (Oxford, 2011), pp 62–3. 128 Albright, ‘Heavenly bodies’. 129 Siraisi, Medieval and early Renaissance medicine, p. 140. 130 O’Grady, Catalogue of Irish manuscripts, i, 275. 131 Michael Stolberg, ‘The decline of uroscopy in early modern learned medicine (1500– 1650)’ in Early Science and Medicine, xii, no. 3 (2007), pp 313–36. 132 University of Edinburgh, MS La. III. 21 is a small book, dated 1587, containing a calendar and astrological tables with advice on diet, uroscopy, and bloodletting. The book was owned by members of the MacBeath (Beaton) family and was probably used a handbook when seeing patients: MacKinnon, A descriptive catalogue, pp 283–6. 133 Nic Dhonnchadha, ‘Early modern Irish medical writings’,pp35–9; Physician’s folding almanac, c.1406 (B.L., Harley MS 5311), available online at: (http://www.bl.uk/manuscripts/ FullDisplay.aspx?ref=Harley_MS_5311) (18 July 2019). 134 T.C.D., MS 1435, p. 260, available online at I.S.O.S. (https://www.isos.dias.ie/english/ index.html) (1 Aug. 2017). 135 Aoibheann Nic Dhonnchadha, ‘Excerpt from an Irish surgical treatise’ in Translation Ireland, i (2000/1), pp 3–4. 136 Timothy O Neill, The Irish hand (Cork, 2014), pp 1–10. 137 Most likely written by Domhnall Albanach Ó Troighthigh (O’Grady, Catalogue of Irish manuscripts, i, 220–1). 138 MacKinnon, A descriptive catalogue, pp 298–301.

medicanum’.139 B.L., Arundel MS 333, a medical manuscript of 128 folios compiled by various scribes in Clare and Cork between 1514 and 1519 was valued at ﬁve pounds in 1590.140

Classical medicine provided the theoretical basis for Gaelic medical practice. According to Luke Demaitre, medieval ‘doctors defined the natural human condi- tion of health as an internal equilibrium and harmony with the environment’.141 A healthy internal equilibrium was maintained by the balance of the four humours and their associated elements and qualities: blood/air – warm/moist; phlegm/ water – cold/moist; black-bile/earth – cold/dry; yellow-bile/fire – warm/dry.142 Blood was produced by the liver, phlegm by the brain, black bile by the spleen and yellow bile by the gallbladder. Illness resulted when the humours were dis- turbed and only when they were rebalanced could health be regained.143 Diagnosis and prognosis were determined by taking the patient’s history, perform- ing a physical examination, and assessing the pulse and urine (uroscopy); the latter reflected the internal humoral status of the individual.144 Good health was maintained by a triad of approaches: regimen manipulated the six ‘non-naturals’ (air, food and drink, evacuation and repletion, sleep and waking, motion and rest, and emotions), drugs countered the effects of the disease, purged the gut and induced sweating, while bloodletting removed the excess humour.145 A huge array of foods, plants, animals, minerals and their compounds were used in the treatment of disease. Probably the most comprehensive Irish materia medica is that compiled by Tadhg Ó Cuinn in 1415 comprising 292 entries of medicinal items more or less in alphabetical order (T.C.D., MS 1343).146 Another manuscript (R.I.A., MS 23 O 6) from the early fifteenth century contains an alphabetical list, mostly in Irish, but some in Latin, of medicinally useful plants.147 Rosa Anglica recommended ‘to him who is constipated, give a clyster (enema) in which are boiled violets, mallows, mercurial, great mallows, bran, cassia fistula, and a little salt’.148 While these compounds were supposed to balance the humours, some may actually have had beneficial effects by modulating biological activities; for example, cassia fistula has antioxidant and antimicrobial effects.149 A recipe for

139 Ibid., p. 298; Bannerman, The Beatons, pp 109–10. 140 O’Grady, Catalogue of Irish manuscripts, i, 231. 141 Luke Demaitre, Medieval medicine: the art of healing from head to toe (Santa Barbara, 2013), p. 15. 142 Wallis, Medieval medicine, p. 6; Paul Strathern, Medicine, from Hippocrates to gene therapy (London, 2005), pp 8–11; M. R. McVaugh, ‘Medicine in the Latin middle ages’ in Irvine Loudon (ed.), Western medicine: an illustrated history (Oxford, 1997) pp 34–6. 143 Demaitre, Medieval Medicine, pp 16–18. 144 Ibid., p. 22. 145 Strathern, Medicine,pp8–11; McVaugh, ‘Medicine in the Latin middle ages’,pp54–65. 146 Ó Cuinn, ‘An Irish materia medica’, ed. Färber. 147 R.I.A., MS 23 O 6, pp 34–5, available online at I.S.O.S. (https://www.isos.dias.ie/english/index.html) (26 June 2020). 148 Wulff (ed.), Rosa Anglica, pp 35–7. 149 A. S. Rahmani, ‘Cassia ﬁstula Linn: potential candidate in the health management’ in Pharmacognosy Research, vii, no. 3 (Jul.–Sept. 2017), pp 217–24.

treating dropsy (oedema) contained a daunting list of fourteen different ingredients.150 It is not known whether the ingredients mentioned were actually used by the Gaelic physicians or if other agents were substituted for hard-to-get items. The assumption that removing blood would drain the corrupted humours and quickly restore balance was the rationale for bloodletting.151 Galen advocated ener- getic bloodletting especially in the treatment of fever.152 From the evidence of the medical handbooks and the phlebotomy charts, bloodletting was a frequent treatment in Gaelic Ireland as elsewhere. The fate of Ó Maelbhrenuinn, the abbot of Boyle, who died following bloodletting in 1225, shows that this could be a dangerous procedure if not done properly.153 Some Gaelic lords had ‘chirurgions’ (surgeons) in their entourages to perform surgical tasks.154 Mostly they let blood, set fractures and sutured wounds. Some surgical texts (chirurgia) were translated into Irish,155 including a very accurate description on how to reduce an inguinal hernia in Rosa Anglica.156 Cutting-for-stone was a dangerous operation to remove a stone from the bladder through the perineum. In 1613 Thomas, the young son of Simon Fraser, the sixth Lord Lovat, died having been cut for stone by one Gill-eandris Beatton.157 Martin Martin reported that Neil Beaton in Skye had ‘the boldness to cut a piece out of a woman’s skull broader than half a crown’ thereby relieving her headaches.158 In Ireland Barra Ó Donnabháin identiﬁed at least eight medieval skull trepanations with evidence that many of the individuals survived. However, it appears that they were performed by surgeons in the Pale rather than among the Gaelic Irish.159 Gaelic surgeons were speciﬁcally excluded from the Dublin Guild of Barber Surgeons under their charter granted by Henry VI in 1446.160 The Gaelic manuscripts also contain charms and incantations that might be recited to encourage healing or prevent illness.161 Irish charms may represent a fusion of sources including the remnants of pre-Christian traditions, imported

150 ‘Roots of fennel and iris, endive, maidenhair, liverwort, wood sage, red and white san- ders, cinnamon, spikenard, wormwood, anise and andiva seeds, and sugar’ (Wulff (ed.), Rosa Anglica, pp 299–301). 151 Demaitre, Medieval medicine, p. 59. 152 Roy Porter, The greatest benefit to mankind: a medical history of humanity from antiquity to the present (London, 1997), pp 73–7. 153 This is possibly the first historical reference to the practice of bloodletting in Ireland (A.L.C., i, 275). 154 Ware, Inquiries concerning Ireland and its antiquities, p. 22. 155 In R.I.A., MS 23 F 19 and T.C.D., MS 1436 there are sections on the treatment of wounds. See also: Demaitre, Medieval medicine, p. 26. 156 ‘The patient lies supine with hips high and head low and (the doctor) puts the guts up very gently with his finger, until they go in by degrees to their own place’ (Wulff (ed.), Rosa Anglica, p. 245). 157 Bannerman, The Beatons, p. 79. 158 Martin, A description of the western islands, p. 198. 159 Barra Ó Donnabháin, ‘A cut above: cranial surgery in medieval Dublin’ in Séan Duffy (ed.), Medieval Dublin II (Dublin, 2001), pp 216–32. A trephined skull from the eighth century was found at Ballyhanna, Co. Donegal (see: C. J. McKenzie and E. M. Murphy, Life and death in medieval Gaelic Ireland (Dublin, 2018), pp 379–81). 160 H. F. Berry, ‘The Ancient Corporation of Barber-Surgeons, or the Guild of St. Mary Magdalene, Dublin’ in Journal of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland, xxxiii (1903), pp 217–38. 161 Wulff, ‘Contra incantationes’, pp 250–3.

Christianity and Norse writing.162 A number of Viking runes carved on bone, wood and leather have been found in Dublin; at least one of them contains a charm for healing.163 Howard Meroney demonstrated that Irish words appeared in Old English charms and according to Charles Plummer ‘Irish was regarded as the language par excellence of magic formulae’.164 The charms identiﬁed in the Gaelic manuscripts were used to relieve headache, cure diseases of the eyes, staunch bleed- ing, preserve teeth and prevent baldness.165 A cure for impotence involved striking the patient with an elm rod on which his name has been inscribed in Irish ogham script.166 Other charms invoked various saints to remove a disease and instructed that various prayers should be said before and after reciting the charm.167 The charms often contained nonsense lines such as this charm for staunching blood in R.I.A., MS 24 B 3 which has been traced to the Old Irish period:

Ar toirmesc gach fola siles. i. egor egor memor memor tap tap cep cep A cur fo thri risin ordoig 7 a tumma ris fo tri 7 coiscid168

Occasionally individual patients are mentioned the manuscripts. In August 1596 Donnchadh Albanach Ó Conchubhair treated Fínghin mac Diarmaid an Bhealaigh for ‘cancir bolgaigh’, probably smallpox (bolgach). His therapy may not have worked, as later he prayed that God would heal his patient.169 Corc Óg Ó Cadhla ( ﬂ. 1577–83) treated two daughters of Brian Caomhánach at

162 Dáithí Ó hÓgáin, The sacred isle: belief and religion in pre-Christian Ireland (Woodbridge, 1999), p. 78; James and Maura Carney, ‘A collection of Irish charms’ in Saga och Sed (1960), pp 144–52; P. F. Wallace, Viking Dublin: the Wood Quay excavations (Sallins, 2016), p. 410. For recent scholarship on Irish charms, see: John Carey, ‘Téacsanna draíochta in Éirinn sa mheánaois luath’ in Ruairí Ó hUiginn (ed.), Breis faoinár ndúchas spioradálta: Léachtaí Cholm Cille, 30 (Maynooth, 2000), pp 98–117; Jacqueline Borsje, ‘Medieval Irish spells: “words of power” as performance’ in Ernst Van den Hemel and Asja Szafraniec (eds), Words: religious language matters (New York, 2016), pp 35–53; Ilona Tuomi, John Carey, Barbara Hillers and Ciarán Ó Gealbháin, (eds), Charms, charmers and charming in Ireland (Cardiff, 2019). 163 Wallace, Viking Dublin, pp 410–14; Vesterhavsøyenes runer, Runeinnskrifter fra Irland (http://www.arild-hauge.com/vesterhavsruner.htm#IRLAND) (26 June 2020). 164 Howard Meroney, ‘Irish in the Old English charms’ in Speculum, xx (1945), pp 172–82; Charles Plummer, Vitae sanctorum Hiberniae (Oxford, 1910), p. clx (note 1). 165 In Scotland, Alexander Carmichael produced three volumes of folk poetry in Irish col- lected from the Western Isles, many of which contain charms and incantations against various illnesses: Alexander Carmichael, Carmina Gadelica (3 vols, Edinburgh, 1900, 1940), ii, 2–159. 166 Nic Dhonnchadha, ‘An Irish medical treatsise’,pp11–25. 167 Carney, ‘A collection of Irish charms’, pp 144–52. 168 ‘For the prevention of every ﬂow of blood. Egor egor memor memor tap tap cep cep, Set it thrice on the thumb and plunge it thrice against it, and it checks [it]’. Carney, ‘A collection of Irish charms’, pp 144–52. See R.I.A., MS 24 B 3, p. 55, lines 18–20 for the original text, available on I.S.O.S. (https://www.isos.dias.ie/english/index.html) (26 June 2020). I am indebted to Aoibheann Nic Dhonnchadha for this reference. 169 Nic Dhonnchadha, ‘The medical school of Aghmacart’,pp33–4.

Graiguenamanagh for menstrual irregularities, but the sources do not provide further details.170 In 1509 Connla Mac an Leagha attended Tomaltach mac Céin, mic Eógain, who had sustained a dangerous foot wound, while Cathal Bearrtha Mac Diarmada Gall was treated when he sustained a serious arrow injury in 1496.171 One of the earliest non-fatal gunshot wounds in Ireland was recorded in 1498 when Edmond Mortel ‘was partially mutilated by shot of gun’; he was obviously treated well as ‘more than a score of children were born to him after that’.172 In Scotland in 1650, the Thane of Cawdor had ‘Donal O’conochar phisitiane’ attend his son ‘qhen he was diseasit before his deceas’.173 In spite of the poor outcome O’Connor’s fee was £66 13s. 8d.; two years later he received £80 for attending the thane himself.174

Medicine was an integral part of the Gaelic world in the pre-modern era. From c.1350 to c.1750 hereditary physicians from over ﬁfty families were tasked with looking after the health of Irish and Scottish lords and their clans; how much care they provided for the lesser members of the septs is unknown. Physicians, as members of a professional class, had high status and were generously rewarded with hereditary lands. Their medical expertise was mostly based on European medical thought drawn from the classical writings of Hippocrates, Galen, and the medieval Arab world. Gaelic physicians who attended European universities translated the classical Latin texts into Irish. Thereafter, the texts or extracts from them were transcribed, often quite selectively. Medical learning passed in the kindred from one generation to the next, but not necessarily from father to son. Women practised medicine, but few female doctors have been identiﬁed. Students learned medicine under the tutelage of an expert doctor (ollamh leighis) in medical schools, which were sometimes peripatetic as the student and teacher travelled about visiting patients. Diagnosis, prognosis and treatment were based on information in the manuscripts, some of which were used as handbooks. History and examination, including that of the pulse and urine, facilitated diagnosis, while treatment was mostly herbal. Advice on health maintenance (regimen sanitatis) was given and surgical procedures, especially bloodletting, were performed by surgeons. Believing in medical astrology, care was taken to ensure that treatment coincided with a propitious arrangement of the zodiac and charts were available to assist with this. Physicians in Ireland and Scotland spoke the same language and were culturally indistinguishable. They moved seamlessly between the two countries; Scottish students studied medicine in Ireland and Irish scribes produced medical works for Scottish physicians. Observers such as Campion and Stanihurst criticised the Irish doctors for their lack of learning, but their view was through the biased

170 Nic Dhonnchadha, ‘Irish medical writing, 1400–1600’, p. 342. 171 R.I.A., MS 23 N 29, available online at I.S.O.S. (https://www.isos.dias.ie/english/ index.html) (26 June 2020); Nic Dhonnchadha ‘Medical writing in Irish’,pp21–6. 172 A.U., iii, 439. 173 C. Innes, The book of the Thanes of Cawdor: a series of papers selected from the charter room at Cawdor, 1236–1742 (Edinburgh, 1859), p. 303. 174 Ibid. In 1707 twelve pounds Scots was equal to one pound sterling, so perhaps the fees were not as extreme as they ﬁrst appear.

prism of the Old English. In Scotland similar prejudices were expressed by Lowlanders: ‘The peoples of the Highlands are “void of the knawledge and feir of God” and prone to “all kynd of barbarous and bestile cruelties”.’175 As the Tudor and Stuart governments began to dominate late sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century Ireland, the Edinburgh government consolidated its control over Gaelic Scotland. These moves split the Gaedhealtacht into Irish and Scottish components, and their different responses to the Reformation enhanced the separation.176 After the departure of the Ulster earls in 1607, the power of the Gaelic lords in Ireland declined and their ability to support the learned professional caste, including the physicians, waned. As Áine Sheehan has noted, the collapse of the aristocracy and the development of modern market economics led to a ‘shift from a prestige-based society, where wealth and power was expressed through feasting and raiding, to a profit-based society of rents, taxes, and debt’.177 Without patrons the Gaelic medical and law schools declined and the role of the professional poets was undermined.178 However, the Gaelic doctors adapted far better to their changing world than the lawyers or the bards. Given their utility in treating illness regardless of the political affiliations of their patients, they continued to practise their craft in an Ireland increasingly dominated by the New English. Thus, doctors such as Denis Collier, Nicholas Hickey and William Kelly were welcomed in Dublin while several Gaelic medical men received land-grants under the plantation of Ulster.179 Whereas previously the doctors would have held kindred lands free under the patronage of a lord in return for professional services, they now had to pay rents on the properties they held and, as the Thane of Cawdor noticed, charged fees. As Charlie Dillon has written, traditional medicine was effectively eclipsed by the rise of the New English in Ireland in the early-seventeenth century.180 The collapse of the Gaelic medical schools encouraged increasing numbers of ambitious Irish students to seek professional medical training overseas; several of these newly qualified physicians returned to Ireland in the 1610s. In spite of their Catholic religion they were allowed to practise medicine freely and were highly regarded as professionals. Horrified at the unregulated medical marketplace in Dublin in the 1620s, a group, comprising continentally-trained Irish physicians and a number of New English medical doctors, petitioned the government to estab- lish a College of Physicians in Dublin similar to the London college which had been established in 1518.181 Although Charles I was happy to comply with the

175 James Hunter, Last of the free: a history of the Highlands and islands of Scotland (Edinburgh, 2000) p. 175. 176 Ellis, ‘The collapse of the Gaelic world, 1450–1650’, pp 449–69; Jonathan Bardon, A narrrow sea: the Irish-Scottish connection in 120 episodes (Dublin, 2018), pp 69–77. 177 Sheehan, ‘Law, poetry and medicine’, p. 133. 178 Dillon, ‘Medical practice and Gaelic Ireland’,pp39–52; Kelly, A guide to early Irish law, p. 260; Sheehan, ‘Law, poetry and medicine’, p. 133. 179 Members of the Ó Siadhail, Ó Caiside, Ó Maol Tuile and Mac an Beatha medical kindreds received estates of ﬁfty to 300 acres in Counties Tyrone, Fermanagh and Cavan (Sheehan, ‘Law, poetry and medicine’, p. 192). 180 Dillon, ‘Medical practice and Gaelic Ireland’,pp32–52. 181 The Irish physicians were Dermot O’Meara, Christopher Talbot and John Verdon while the New English doctors were James Metcalfe and Paul Delaune. Other prominent Irish physicians at the time include Thomas Arthur and Gerald Fennell, both of whom graduated from Reims. See: M. A. Lyons, ‘The role of graduate physicians in professionalising medical

request, the proposed college never materialised and it was not until 1654 that a Fraternity of Physicians was established; the ﬁrst royal charter creating a College of Physicians in Dublin was granted by Charles II in 1667 and in Edinburgh in 1681.182 Thus, Irish doctors were able to continue in their profession long after the destruction of the Gaelic order and medicine was not prohibited to Catholics under the penal laws enacted from 1695 onwards.183 In Scotland traditional kin-based medicine continued to be practised until the early-eighteenth century when Gaelic society declined signiﬁcantly. In the words of the Scottish judge, Lord President Duncan Forbes, in 1746: ‘the Irish language and highland dress gave way to a sort of English, and lowland cloathing; the inha- bitants took to the plough in place of weapons … and are as tame as their low coun- try neighbours’.184 The last doctor fully trained in the traditional manner was Fergus Beaton, practising in South Uist in the Outer Hebrides in 1700.185 Two MacLean hereditary surgeons were in practice in Skye in 1716 and members of the Morrison family were there in 1754, but their training may not have been exclusively traditional.186 We can assume, therefore, that by the 1750s traditional Gaelic medical practice had come to an end in Ireland and Scotland. The decline in Gaelic medicine was not entirely political. Medical knowledge underwent a profound transformation during the sixteenth and early-seventeenth centuries with the publications of Andreas Vesalius’s (1514–64) De humani corporis fabrica, Ambrose Paré’s (1510–90) La méthode de traicter les playes faictes par hacquebutes et aultres bastons à feu, and William Harvey’s (1578–1657) Exercitatio anatomica de motu cordis et sanguinis in animalibus.187 These three works overturned the medieval ideas about anatomy, surgery and physiology and laid the foundations for modern medicine. Physicians began to learn from experience and by observing their own patients rather than relying on the teachings of the past and astronomical charts.188 In Lowland Scotland medical training in the seventeenth century was by formal apprenticeship or a university degree,189 while from Ireland large numbers of aspiring doctors travelled overseas to get a medical education.190 Nial O’Glacan (c.1563–1653), an Irish physician who was trained by the Mac Duinnshléibhe physicians in Donegal, became professor of medicine at the University of Bologna in the 1640s. While he adhered strongly to the authority

practice in Ireland, c.1619–54’ in Kelly & Clark (eds), Ireland and medicine in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries,pp17–37. 182 Ibid.; Alf McCreary, Healing touch: an illustrated history of the Royal College of Physicians of Ireland (Dublin, 2015), p. 17; M. H. Kaufman, ‘Early history of the Royal College of Physician of Edinburgh’ in Res Medica, cclxviii (2005), pp 49–53. 183 Toby Barnard, A new anatomy of Ireland: the Irish Protestants, 1649–1770 (New Haven, 2003), p. 128; D. W. Hayton, ‘The emergence of a Protestant society, 1691–1730’ in Jane Ohlmeyer (ed.), The Cambridge history of Ireland, ii: 1550–1730 (Cambridge, 2018), p. 147. 184 H. R. Duff, The Culloden papers, comprising an extensive and interesting correspond- ence from 1625 to 1748 (London, 1815), p. 301. 185 Bannerman, The Beatons, p. 121. 186 Ibid., pp 121–2. 187 Allan Chapman, Physicians, plagues and progress: the history of western medicine from antiquity to antibiotics (Oxford, 2016), pp 181–9, 192–5, 206–12. 188 Porter, The greatest beneﬁt to mankind, pp 302–3. 189 Bannerman, The Beatons, p. 125. 190 Lyons, ‘The role of graduate physicians in professionalising medical practice in Ireland’,pp17–37.

of Hippocrates and Galen he also ﬂirted with the very new idea of pathological anatomy, thus bridging the gap between traditional Gaelic medicine and the new medicine of the seventeenth century.191

191 Samuel Simms, ‘Nial O’Glacan of Donegal’ in Ulster Medical Journal, iv, (1935), pp 186–9; Jan G. van den Tweel and Clive R. Taylor, ‘A brief history of pathology: preface to a forthcoming series that highlights milestones in the evolution of pathology as a discipline’ in Virchows Archives, cdlvii, no. 1 (2010), pp 3–10. I would like to thank Dr Aoibheann Nic Dhonnchadha for her advice on earlier drafts of this article.