Address in Public Medicine
Authors: E. D. Mapother
Journal: BMJ (1886)

ITS WAVORK.THIE medical profession in Ireland and its work will be the subject of the address which, in response to the invitation of the President and Council, I humbly submit.The exhaustive way in which the great questions grouped under the name of public medicine have been treated by my predecessors since the section was founded in Dublin, and by the editor of the JOURNAL, has rendered selection of topics very difficult.My choice arose in the belief that reliable information concerning my country would just now interest a British medical audience, and that, being somewhat conversant with its curative and preventive organisations, the limited time at my disposal could be thus best used.I shall, of course, only dwell on those points wherein our system differs from the British.And at the outset, perhaps, those fond of ancient lore may be pleased to hear of what kind our calling was when (to use the words of a matchless orator) "Ireland had almost a monopoly of learning and piety, and when she nearly alone held up the truths of civilisation, of true Christian civilisation in Northern and Western Europe."In the introduction to South's Memorials to the Craft of Surgery, Sir J. Paget says: "Many of the things thus told must seem to us very strange, and in this sense amusing; especially if we only think of them as if they were occurriniig now and under the same conditions as we are living under.A more careful reading will show that the 'strange' things were usually fitted to the times and the circum- stances in which they happened; and that, like the organs and the changes in an embryo, and in spite of many errors and defects of human management, they were in progress towards better things."The earlier dwellers in Irelan-I were very heterogenous, and battles were constant between the various races.Military surgery must needs have been cultivated.However, I pass by this time of which Dian- cecht, that is "God of Healing," was the most renowned, the reliable and the fabulous being too much intermingled in the records.The Brehon Code of Laws, the most ancient in Europe, dating from the fifth century, lately translated under a government commission, of which Dr. Graves (now Bishop of Limerick) was secretary, deals largely with medical affairs.The most important of them, Senchus Mor, originated with St. Patrick, and for twelve centuries controlled the native Irish, especially while the tribal system prevailed.The provision in them most worthy of imitation at present was that the physi- cian sat in the Council of the State.Sir D. Corrigan, our greatest physician, and one of our foremost public men, regarded membership of the Privy Council as vastly superior to titular distinction-yet he was never offered that position, wherein his splendid abilities would have widely served his nlation.Sanitary and many other great public works are controlled by this body in Ireland.These Brehon Laws refer to surgeons who lived before the second cen- tury.They carefully provide for distress, that is, taxation, for the support of a son taken from his mother's dead breast, for the in- curable, for the care of the sick as to food, bedding, nursing, and a house with wind blowing in all quarters, and with a stream close by.The medical man had power to keep from the sick room "fools and female scolds."The mode of distraint in case of a physician was, "Let his horsewhip and his probes be taken up.If he has not the proper number of such things, let a thread be tied about the finger next his little finger."The unqualified physician was to be fined if he operated without getting a guarantee against damages, or without having given notice that he was not qualified.The regular practitioner was to be quite exempt.An impartial physician 'Nas to be the judge of the mode of treatment, and of the due recompense.The fees, always paid by oxen, the current coin, were most exactly from whistling, the eyes from dazzling, the tongue from lisping, the mouth from malling, the teeth from chattering, the throat from rattling, the hands irom shivering, the sinews from shrinking, the veins from crumpling, the bones from aching, the marrow from soaking."To this day there is a universal belief among the vulgar as to the preventive and curative effects of whiskey ina the onset of acute disease.