Page 109 - Demo

Chapter Four 109
from every mean Gall and two pennies from every noble Gall. Unsurprisingly, as no one of the Galls would class himself as miserly, the poet’s panniers were soon illed to the brim with two-penny pieces, which he duly carried of to his famed school of Rathain, near Kilbeggan, in West Meath. Once there, he then divided his booty, bestowing one-third on the school, one-third on the seven streets of foreign scholars who were studying there-the third-third he kept for himself.
Now another art that was carefully studied and cultivated in ancient Ireland was medi- cine. There was a distinct professional class of physicians, both male and female, who un- derwent a regular course of education and practical training, and whose qualiications and privileges were universally recognised. Those intended for the profession were usually edu- cated by being apprenticed to a physician of standing, in whose school of medicine they lived during their pupilage and by whom they were instructed. This profession, like many others in ancient Ireland, became in great measure, hereditary in certain families.
Medical doctors igure in the ancient tales, most conspicuously in the Tales of the Red Branch Knights, where it is recounted that an entire medical corps, presided over by one head physician, accompanied each army during the war known as the Táin Bó Cuailgne. Each leech of the company, as medicine men were titled, carried, slung from his waist, a bag-called a lés [lace] which was packed full of various medicines; and at the end of the day’s ighting, whether between numbers or individuals, they came forward and applied their salves.
Though the medical profession continued uninterruptedly from the most distant ages, the irst reference to an individual physician we ind in the annals of Christian times occurs in A.D. 860, where the death is recorded of Maelodar O’Tinnri, who is described as “the best physician in Ireland”.
From that period onwards, the annals record a succession of eminent Irish physicians, whose reputation, like that of the Irish scholars of other professions, reached as far as the Continent of Europe, and beyond.
In the beginning of the seventeenth century, when medicine had been successfully stud- ied in Ireland for more than a thousand years, Jan Van Helmont of Brussels, a distinguished physician and celebrated writer on medical subjects, a man once dubbed ‘the father of pneumatic chemistry,’ wrote a brief account of the Irish physicians of his time in which he praised their books, their remedies, and their great skill. He recorded: