THE LIBRARY OF THE
Bristol Medico-Chirurgical Society.
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HISTORY
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Txnijal College nf InrgeottB in Srrfimii.
Digitized by the Internet Archive
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HISTORY
OK THE
€0!!^ of Surricmto
IN IRELAND,
AND OV THE
IRISH SCHOOLS OF MEDICINE ;
INCLUDING
NUMEROUS BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES
ALSO A
MEDICAL BIBLIOGRAPHY.
BY
SIE CHAKLES A. CAMEBON,
jBrcsibtnt of the Konal dMIsgt of Surgtons in Ireland.
DUBLIN :
FANNIN & COMPANY, 41 GRAFTON-STREET. LONDON: BAILL] EKE, TINDALL, & COX. EDINBURGH ! MACLAUHLAN & STEWART.
1 8 8 (J .
DUBLIN: PRINTED BY JOHN FALCONER, 53 UPPER SACKVILLE-STKEET.
TO
MATTHEW O'REILLY DEASE, Esq., D.L.,
FORMERLY MEMBER OF PARLIAMENT FOR THE COUNTY OF LOUTH, WHOSE GENEROUS GIFTS
TO THE
ROYAL COLLEGE OF SURGEONS
ARE
RECORDED IN THE FOLLOWING PAGES,
THIS HISTORY IS DEDICATED.
PEEFACE
This work is published under the authority of the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland, and at their expense. As the Author receives no pecuniary remuneration, the price of the book is fixed so as about to cover the cost of producing it ; but should a profit be made by the sale of this or any future edition, it will be given to the Eoyal Medical Benevolent Fund.
The materials used in compiling this history have been chiefly derived from the following sources : — The archives of the Royal College of Surgeons, of the Corporation of Dublin, and of the Public Records Office ; the minute books of various hospitals and public Boards ; parish registries ; inscriptions on tombs ; thousands of books, periodicals, and newspapers of the present century and of some of its predecessors ; family papers, &c. The following libraries were searched — The College, Trinity College, the College of Physicians, the National, the Royal Dublin Society, the Royal Irish Academy, the Public Library (Marsh's), Dr. Steevens' Hospital, and King's Inns, in Dublin ; and the British Museum, the Royal College of Surgeons, and the Medico-Chirurgical Society, in London.
The information which enabled me to write the biographical sketches was chiefly obtained from the originals of the sketches, or from their descendants, relatives, or friends; a small portion was, however, derived from previous biographical and obituary notices. In numerous cases I was able, by reference to Parish
Vlll
PREFACE.
Registers and other records, to verify or correct the information supplied to me. I was or am acquainted with many of the gentlemen whose biographies are given in Chapters XIV., XV., XVI., XVIII., and XX., and have been able to write of them from personal knowledge. For the composition of the biographies, and for the opinions expressed in the biographical and other parts of the work, I am alone responsible.
I am sure that the hundreds of kind friends and others who have supplied me with information for the biographical parts of this History will rest satisfied with a general expression of thanks. I must, however, specially acknowledge my obligations to Sir George H. Porter, Mr. W. Oolles, Dr. Banks, Dr. Aquilla Smith, Dr. Martin of Portlaw, and Dr. Bigger, who gave me much valuable information, and without whose assistance several of the biographies would have been incomplete. I desire also to heartily thank Dr. Ingram, S.F.T.C.D., Librarian, and Mr. French, Assistant-Librarian, of Trinity College ; Mr. Archer, F.R.S., Librarian of the National Library, and his staff ; and the officials of the Public Records Office, for their courtesy, and for the facilities which they afforded me for discovering in their respective libraries materials for this History.
My friend, Mr. William Edward Ellis, LL.B , having kindly volunteered to prepare the Index to this History, has carried out his proposal with that thoroughness and accuracy which charac- terise all his literary work.
CONTENTS.
Page
CHAPTER I.
On the Progress of Medical Knowledge and Literature in Ireland up to
the year 1700 ........ 1
CHAPTER H.
Medical Bibliography in Ireland during the Eighteenth Century . . 14
CHAPTER III.
The Barber-Surgeons . . . . . . .52
CHAPTER IV.
Surgical Education and Examinations in Ireland prior to the Foundation
of the College of Surgeons . . . . . .91
CHAPTER V.
Incorporation of the Irish Surgeons . . . . .111
CHAPTER VI.
The College under their First Charter . . . . .123
CHAPTER VII.
The Second Charter ....... 158
CHAPTER VIII.
The College under their Second Charter . . . . 1 70
CHAPTER IX.
The Supplemental Charter . . . . . . .196
CHAPTER X.
The College under their Supplemental Charter . . .211
X
CONTENTS.
Page
CHAPTER XI.
The College Library . . . . . . .267
CHAPTER XII.
The College Museum ....... 275
CHAPTER XHI.
The Connection between the College and the Navy and Army Medical
Departments ........ 288
CHAPTER XIV.
The Presidents of the College under the First Charter— 1784 to 1828 . 305
CHAPTER XV.
The Presidents of the College under the Second Charter — 1829-1844 . 387
CHAPTER XVI.
The Presidents of the College under the Supplemental Charters,
1844-1885-6 ........ 399
CHAPTER XVII. The College School ........ 446
CHAPTER XVIII. Biographical Sketches of the College Professors .... 458
CHAPTER XIX.
The Unchartered, or Private, Schools of Medicine . . .513
CHAPTER XX.
Biographical Sketches of the Lecturers in the Private Schools of Medicine 544 Addenda ......... 6S3
CHAPTER XXI.
The University and Provincial Medical Schools .... 684
Appendix A Table showing Attendance at Lectures in Dublin Medical
Schools ...... 695
„ B The Council and Officers of the College . . .696
C Ceremonies and Banquet at the College, 28th April, 1886 699
Index 723
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
Page
The Koyal College of Surgeons in 1886, ----- Frontispiece
Daunt's and Dease's Lithotomes, - - - - - -44
The Polegate — Guildhall of Dublin Barber- Surgeons in the Seventeenth Century, 69
Arms of the Barber-Surgeons, - - - - - - - 68
Facsimile of Barber-Surgeons' Certificate, - - - - - 81
The Tailors' Hall, Back-lane, ------- 87
The First Anatomy-house, T.C.D., - - - - - - 98
Sir Thomas Molyneux's House, Peter-street, Dublin, .... 104
Mercer's Hospital in 1734, - - - - - - - 133
The Royal College of Surgeons in 1810, - - - - - - 144
The Meath Hospital a Century ago, ------ 394
The Meath Hospital in 1886, - - - - - - - 394
The Stewart Institution for Idiots, &c, ------ 429
The Richmond Hospital School in 1826, - - - - - - 523
The Whitworth Hospital, - - - - - - - 636
The Coombe Hospital, - - - - - - - - 653
Conferring Honorary Fellowship on Sir James Paget, - - - - 699
Plan of Banqueting Hall, - - - - - - - 721
HONOKAKY MEMBEKS OK FELLOWS OF THE COLLEGE,
ELECTED SINCE 1784. Those marked thus (*) are deceased.
*Abernethy, John, London. *Adair, Eobert, London. * Armstrong, Sir Alexander, Navy. *Ballingall, Sir George, Edinburgh. *Bell, Benjamin, Edinburgh.
Bowman, Sir William, London. *Bradt, John, M.P. *Brodie, Sir Benjamin C, Bart., London. *Burnett, Sir William, Navy. *Cloquet, Jules, Paris. *Cooper, Sir Astlet P., Bart., London.
Crawford, Sir Thomas, Army. *Cuvier, Baron Georges Chretien
Leopold Dagobert, Paris. *Franklin, Henry, Army. *Gibson, Sir James, Army. *Gulliver, George, London.
Hanbury, Sir James Arthur, Army.
Haughton, Eev. Samuel, Dublin.
Helmholtz, Hermann Ludwig Fer- dinand, Berlin. *Hey, William, Leeds. *Houghton, Kichard, Dublin.
*Humfry, William Charles, Army. *Hunter, John, London.
Huxley, Thomas H., London.
Lister, Sir Joseph, Bart., London. *Logan, Sir Thomas Galbraith, Army. *Louis, Antoine, Paris. *M'Grigor, Sir James, Bart., Army.
Marshall, John, London. *0'Halloran, Sylvester, Limerick.
Owen, Sir Eichard, London.
Paget, Sir James, Bart,, London. *Parkes, Edmund Alexander, Netley.
Pasteur, Louis, Paris. *Pearson, John, London. *Pitcairn, Sir James, Army. *Pott, Percival, London. *Scarpa, Antonio, Pavia. *S6mmering, Samuel Thomas, Munich. *Syme, James, Edinburgh. *Tiedemann, Frederick, Heidelberg. *Webb, Sir John, Army.
Wells, Sir Thomas Spencer, Bart., London.
HISTORY
OF THE
ROYAL COLLEGE OF SURGEONS IN IRELAND.
CHAPTER I.
ON THE PROGRESS OF MEDICAL KNOWLEDGE AND LITERATURE IN IRELAND UP TO THE TEAR 1700.
It is admitted that a comparatively high state of civilisation prevailed in Ireland during the earlier ages of the Christian era ; we may, therefore, infer that the ancient Irish were not ignorant of such knowledge of medicine as then existed in Europe. It is likely that some of the persons who studied at the seats of learning devoted their attention to the healing art.
The Annals of Tiernach are, with the exception of the Psalter of Cashel, the oldest Celtic MSS. — probably the most ancient in any language in Northern Europe. It is stated in them that in the year 366 a princess died in consequence of having swallowed a poisoned draught, from which we infer that even in that early age some knowledge of the preparation of drugs prevailed.
Legendary lore assigns to the ancient Irish an extraordinary degree of surgical skill. It is stated in an ancient MS. that Josina, the son of a Scotch king who reigned about a century and a half before the birth of Christ, was sent by his father to Ireland to be educated amongst the physicians and surgeons of that country.
In a MS. entitled Cath Muighe Fuiredh, preserved in the library of Trinity College, an account is given of a battle, the wounded in which were placed in medicated baths by a celebrated surgeon named Diancecht. This personage, who flourished about two
B
2
SURGERY AMONGST THE ANCIENT IRISH.
thousand years ago, is stated to have furnished a silver hand to a potentate who had been deprived of that member in a battle. The workmanship of the artificial hand was so wondrous that it was quite as useful to the potentate as his uninjured hand. It is probable that Diancecht was the Celtic equivalent of Esculapius. This legend and similar myths as to the marvellous skill of the ancient Irish physicians and surgeons show at least a traditional belief in the existence of a high degree of culture amongst the practitioners of the healing art in Ireland in early ages.
In Southey's "Morte d' Arthur," page 258, it is stated that when Sir Tristram was wounded by a poisoned spear he was advised to go to the country from whence his antagonist had come — namely, Ireland, for there alone the venom could be neutralised. He went to that country, and was placed by King Anguysshe under the care of his daughter, who " was a noble surgeon."
In Hammer's Chronicles we find the following account of a cure effected by an ancient Irish lady-doctor : — " In the time of Alfred, King of the West Saxons, Anno 872, as Fabian and Cooper have noted, there was a grievous malady reigning among the people, called the evil ficus, which also took the king, so that, say mine authors, an Irish maid came out of Ireland called Modwen, whose monastery in time of rebellion was destroyed, and cured the king."
" Medical women " were not peculiar to the ancient Irish. We learn from Tacitus that the women followed the German armies for the purpose of dressing the wounds of the soldiers upon the battle-field — A d matres, ad conjuges vulneraferunt; nec illce numerare aut exigere plagas pavent (" De Moribus Germanic," cap. VII.).
In the libraries of Trinity College, Dublin, and the Royal Irish Academy there are large collections of manuscript works on medicine written in the Irish language. Many of them are dated in the fourteenth century ; and the caligraphy of several of them is quite equal to anything of the kind met with in monastic manuscripts.
The Irish medical MSS. are chiefly translations from the Latinised versions of the works of the Greek " fathers of medi-
ANCIENT IRISH MEDICAL MANUSCRIPTS.
3
cine," and of the Arabian writers on medicine, but they are by no means poor in accounts of indigenous practice, and in many of the translations the opinions of the translators are freely expressed. Epidemic influenza is first described in an Irish MS. of the fifteenth century under the names of fuacht and sloadhan.
Stanihurst speaks of the Irish reading very old and discoloured medical MSS. on vellum. They were in the Irish language, and were held in much repute as the depositories of medical maxims and rules which were of great antiquity (De Reb. Hibern., Antwerp, 1584).
One of the most interesting of the Irish medical works pre- served in the library of the Royal Irish Academy is the volume known as " Hy-Brassil." It is surmised that this work was written by the O'Lees. The book is of quarto size, consists of 88 pages, and dates from 1390. It is composed of three fragments of inde- pendent works, and the writing is extremely beautiful. The term Hy-Brassil refers to the fact that the MS. was discovered in the hy, or country of the O'Brassils.
The valuable Celtic MSS. from the celebrated Ashburnham Collection have lately come into the possession of the Academy, and are being arranged and catalogued. They include several treatises on medical subjects. Exclusive of these, the Academy possesses in all eighty -eight medical MSS. It is a matter for regret that none of them have been translated into English for publication. The Academy receives an annual Parliamentary grant of £300 for the translation, editing, and publishing of Irish manuscripts. It is only reasonable that a few of the medical ones should be translated and published at the expense of the State. Two of the MSS. have already been translated into English by Mr. Joseph O'Longan — viz., those numbered 23 K (342 pages) and No. 42 (444 pages) in the catalogue ; the former relates to the Materia Medica. Amongst the Ashburnham Col- lection there is a nicely-written treatise on Materia Medica, by Neal O'Q uin, dated 1535. The names of the articles described are given in Irish and Latin, and the descriptions of them in Irish.
4
HEREDITARY PHYSICIANS IN IRELAND.
That medical men occupied a definite position amongst the Irish from the sixth century to the fourteenth century is evident from the clauses referring to them in the Brehon, or Irish code of laws. Their rates of remuneration were fixed, and in the social scale they were ranked as equal to the smiths. At present there is a considerable difference socially between smiths and surgeons ; but in the middle ages, when defensive armour was worn, the smith stood high amongst craftsmen.
About a thousand years ago it became the practice in Ireland to adopt medicine as a hereditary profession. After a time it became a custom for certain families to provide from amongst themselves physicians to treat the members of other and generally more distinguished families — for example, the O'Lees were here- ditary physicians to the O 'Flaherties of Galway, the O'Hickeys to the O'Briens of Thomond, the O'Sheils to the Mahonys of Oriel, and so on.
A family of physicians named O'Callenan migrated from Galway to the county of Cork, where, according to Surgeon Silvester O'Halloran, they became so celebrated as physicians that down to the middle of the last century it was a common saying in reference to a supposed incurable case — " Ni leighbis jiobd Cal- lenan seine" — "even an O'Callenan could not cure him."
The learned Dr. O'Donovan states that the celebrated astro- nomer, Halley, was descended from the O'Halghaiths, a family of hereditary physicians.
Of the skill of the Irish physicians Professor Van Helmont, who visited Ireland, says : — " The Irish are better managed in their sickness than the Italians, who have a physician in every village."*
The disturbed condition of Ireland during the greater part of the sixteenth, seventeenth, and even the eighteenth centuries greatly retarded and often arrested the progress of medical know- ledge. There was little to encourage men of ability to study or practise medicine in Ireland. The population was small and poor. There were, outside Dublin, no very large towns. Encourage- ment of learning and scientific research was almost wholly wanting.
* Confessio Authoris (page 13). Anisteloedami. 1649.
KAHLIEST IRISH MEDICAL WORKS.
5
Literally there was but one seat of learning in the country — namely, Trinity College, which, however, did but little to advance the intei'ests of medicine until recent times. It is not to be wondered at, then, that Ireland is poor in medical literature of the seventeenth century, and that in the eighteenth century she occupied a position relatively inferior to that of many other countries of equal size, but more favourably circumstanced.
There were very few books published in Ireland during the sixteenth century. Dr. Rutty, writing in the middle of the last century to an inquiring friend, says that he believes there were no books printed in Ireland during that century ; but in this surmise he was mistaken, as at least two or three devotional books were printed in Dublin before the seventeenth century. It is unlikely that any medical literature existed in print at that time. In Harris's edition of Sir James Ware's work on " The Writers of Ireland " it is stated (Book I., page 94) that Nicholas Stanishurst, who died in 1554, wrote a treatise entitled " Dieta Medicorum." I have not been able to discover this treatise in any of the libraries or book catalogues which I have searched ; it was probably published in Holland. There is reason to believe that the first medical work by an Irish author which appeared in type was Dr. Theobald Anguilbert's " Mensa Philosophica," pub- lished in Paris in 1530 by J. de Hursy. Its contents are chiefly table-talk and small witticisms, and it is almost undeserving of the title of a medical work. This author was educated abroad and practised in France.
Dr. Thady, or Thadeus Dun, an Irishman, practised in Locarno, in Switzerland. He published, in 1591, his " Epistolse Medicinales," which, in 1619, was followed by a larger work, entitled " De Morbis Mulieribus." Dun was probably the first to suggest the use of the warm bath in tedious labour.
In the following pages I shall give a list of the medical works published in Ireland up to the year 1800, and I have reason to believe that it will be found as nearly as possible a complete Irish medical bibliography for that period. A few references to the works of Irish physicians published in other countries will be given.
6 THE O'MEARAS AND o'GLACAN.
In 1619 Dr. Dermod O'Meara published in Dublin a duodecimo work, entitled " Pathologia Hereditaria Generalis," which, I believe, was the first work of the kind printed in Dublin. It must have been considered a respectable production, seeing that it was reprinted in London, in 1665, and in Amsterdam in 1666. Edmund, son of O'Meara, graduated in Oxford, and received an honorary degree from the London College of Physicians. Some of his works were published in London in 1665. Three genera- tions of O'Mearas practised in Ireland and London.
A famous Irish physician of this century, Dr. Neil O'Glacan — better known upon the Continent as Nellanus Glacanus — was born in the county of Donegal about the close of the sixteenth century. He received his medical education abroad, and filled in succession the Chairs of Physic at the Universities of Toulouse and Bologna. At that time those Universities, especially that of Bologna, were the seats of important schools of medicine. He was a physician and privy councillor to the King of France. His chief works are " Tractatus de Peste" (1629) and « Cnrsus Medicus" (1655). That O'Glacan was held in high esteem by his contemporaries is evident from the eulogistic poem referring to him, composed by Peter von Adrian Brocke, Professor of Eloquence at Lucca. It has been translated by Harrison, and commences as follows : —
" Hoc Glacan nostra Glacan celeberrimus arte."
" With healing art he arms us to repel Dire troops of agues and of fevers fell. Whatever ills the patient may endure, Known, or unknown, unerring is his cure. Nor more instructions from my muse inquire, The sons of science him alone admire. His works all Gallia with attention reads. Sucks in his knowledge and reveres his deeds. Hence Belgia smitten with his art divine, Far distant Spain, and thou who drink'st the vine ; Hence Italy with ample presents sued The sage when absent, and with honors woo'd. Bononia, now, with skill-imbibing ears, Devours his lectures, and applauding hears, While he unlocks the healthy mystic stores Of princely Galen, and his path explores. His country, blest in such a son, may boast ; And this be thine Ultonia's ancient coast."
DOCTORS O'CONNOR, BOATE, AND STEARNE.
7
Dr. Bernard O'Connor, a native of Kerry, was physician to the celebrated John Sobieski, King of Poland. O'Connor received his medical education at Montpelier (then and long after a celebrated seat of medical learning). He proceeded to Paris, where he was admitted professionally to the Royal Chambers, and thereupon added to his titles — e Regid Camera Parisiensis Societate. He passed the latter portion of his life in London, and died there in 1698, at the early age of thirty-two. He wrote the treatises " De Humane Hypogastri Sarco Matei," " Dissertationes Medico- Physics," and " Evangelium Medici." In the last-named work he advances an opinion that generation may be effected without actual contact of the sexes — an opinion verified by recent experi- mental results.
Two Dutch physicians, Gerard and Arnold Boate, practising in Ireland, published in Dublin, in 1641, an octavo volume, entitled "Philosophia Naturales," in which they criticised the system of Aristotle. In 1652 G. Boate published in London (reprinted in Dublin, 1726, and also in 1755 by G. & A. Ewing) a " Natural History of Ireland." He applauded the action of Parliament in pro- hibiting the use of salmon out of season, and attributed the leprosy prevalent in Ireland to the consumption of that unwholesome food.
In 1659 Dr. John Stearne published a work entitled "DeMorte Dissertatio in qua mottis Natura causae mobilitas remora? et Kemedia prohonuntur ; acvariae de cadavere et anima separata con- troversial enodantur." It was printed in Dublin by Win. Bladen. A second edition, published in 1699, consists of a duodecimo volume of 308 pages; the type and paper are of excellent quality, as shown in the copy of this rare work preserved in the Worth Library, Dr. Steevens' Hospital, Dublin. Stearne was born at Ardbraccan, county of Meath, in 1622. He was educated in Trinity College, Dublin, and became a Senior Fellow thereof. He was the first President of the Fraternity of Physicians, Trinity Hall, 1665-7, of the College of Physicians in Dublin, 1660-7, and of the King and Queen's College of Physicians, 1669. He died 18th November, 1669. He appears to have studied divinity even more ardently than medicine.
8
WORKS OF CONLY, O'DWYER, AND WOLVERIDGE.
Stearne also wrote "Aphorisme de Felicitate," Dublin, 1654 and 1656, 8vo; "Animi Medela," &c. (a very long title), Dublin, 1658, 8vo, pp. 516 ; and several other works having little relevancy to medicine.
In 1667 Cassin Conly published a duodecimo volume in Dublin, entitled " Willisius Male Vindicatus Sive Medicus Oxoniensis Mendacitatis et Inscitiaa Detectus." Willis was the celebrated professor of medicine at Oxford, and Conly was a native of the Queen's County. He vindicated Willis's views on fever, which had been assailed by Dermod O'Meara.
A rare and curious book by John O'Dwyer, evidently an Irish- man, giving an account of the state of the medical profession and complaining of the intrusion of midwives and quacks, has the following title : — "Querela Medica se Planctus Medicinaa Moderns Status Athore. Ioanne O'Dwyer, Cassiliensi Medicinal Liccin- tiato Vrbisque Montensis Medico Pensionario. Montibus Ex Officina JEgidii V. Havart. Sub Signo Paradisi. 1686."
In the British Medical Journal for 1884 several letters appeared in reference to a work on Midwifery by Wolveridge, said to be the oldest original book on the subject by an English author. It was stated that the only known copy in existence was that lately in possession of Dr. Fordyce Baker, of New York, but which had been taken for transcription by a Frenchman, who subsequently dis- appeared. It was, moreover, alleged that the book was published in Dublin in 1670. It has since been ascertained that two copies (one imperfect) of this rare work are in England — one in the Ratford Library, St. Mary's Hospital, the other in the possession of Dr. Jardine, Capel, Surrey. I find that it was printed in London, not in Dublin, in the year 1671. The author practised in Cork, and his name appears, but with a " 1 " before it, in Belcher's list of the "Fraternity of Physicians," Trinity Hall, Dublin, established in 1660. I find the name James Wolveridge, M.D., 1664, in Dr. Todd's roll of graduates of the University of Dublin.
As Wolveridge's work seems to be regarded with so much interest, I give its title in full: — "Speculum Matricis; or the
TEMPLE — PETTY — THE PHILOSOPHICAL SOCIETY.
9
Expert Midwives' Handmaid, Catechistically Composed, by James Wolveridge, M.D., with a Copious Alphabetical Index, written IVXta Magnae la Del sCrlptor, Anno Domini 1669, Chrono- gramma 1669. 'Damnosa quid non imminuit dies'? .ZEtas paren- tum, pejor avis, tulit, nos nequiores, mox daturos progeniem vitiosiorem.' — Horat, Lib. 3, Carminum, Ode 6. London : Printed by E. Okes ; and are to be sold by Rowland Reynolds, at the King's Arms in the Poultry. 1671." The book contains 210 pages and 30 engravings. Its contents are in the form of a dialogue between a doctor and a midwife.
In 1677 Sir John Temple published in Dublin a work on the "Cure of the Gout by Moxa." This substance was, up to the early part of the present century, a favourite remedy for the gout. It consisted of little cylinders made from a species of night-wort.
Sir William Petty, M.D., an Englishman (born May 26, 1623, died December 16, 1687), practised for some time in Dublin, and was clerk of the Privy Council and one of the surveyors of the country. He published in London, in 1683 and 1687, " Observa- tions on the Bills of Mortality of Dublin and the State of the City." They are valuable treatises.
In 1683 the Dublin Philosophical Society was founded by William Molyneux, and commenced to hold meetings in a house on Cork-hill, but in the same year it removed to the house of Mr. Wetherel, apothecary, at Crow's Nest (where now the Cecilia-street School of Medicine stands), and established a labora- tory, museum, and botanic garden. Amongst its thirty-nine members in 1667 we find the names of eleven medical men. The Society's meetings were discontinued in 1686, on account of the troublous state of the times. In the list of essays on subjects relating to medical science there are various papers on human and comparative anatomy, on the dissections of a man who died from consumption, and on various other subjects, by Dr. Allen Mullin, or Moulin ; on the dissection of the water newt and other sub- jects, by W. Molyneux; on consumption, by Sir W. Petty; on hermaphrodism, by St. George Ashe (Provost of T.C.D.); on venous and arterial blood, and on the dissection of a bat, &c, by
10
DR. ALLEN MULLEN'S RESEARCHES.
R. Bulkeley ; on various dissections of the human subject, and two on the stone, by Mr. Patterson ; on hermaphrodism, by Dr. Willougby; on the dissection of a monstrous child, by Dr. Houlaghan ; on De Acido et Urinoso, by Dr. Silvius. There are other papers of minor interest. The most important read before this Society was that in which Mullin described the vascu- larity of the lens of the eye, to the discovery of which he appears to have been led by the dissection of an elephant. Attempts to revive this Society were made in 1693 and 1707, but they were not successful, and the papers read during these years are devoid of medical interest. During many years subsequent to the extinction of the Philosophical Society, the " Philosophical Transactions " of the Royal Society of London were the chief media for announcing to the world the facts discovered and the opinions enunciated by Irish medical men.
Allen Mullen, or Moulin, was one of the most original of the writers whose papers were read before the Philosophical Society- He was born in the North of Ireland, and graduated* in medicine in Dublin University. In 1686 he removed to London, and from thence went with Lord Inchiquin to the West Indies. His fate was a sad one. Landing at Barbadoes, he fell in with some bon vivants, who induced him to drink too much of the " wine of the countrv." The result was a fever, of which he died. Mullen "was a Fellow of the Royal Society, and was much esteemed in his time. He made an anatomical examination of an elephant that was accidentally burnt to death in Dublin, and with such accuracy that his descriptions have been quoted by writers down to the present time. His work was published in a small volume in London in 1682. The "Philosophical Transactions" for 1685 (No. 174) contain an account of his dissections of a " monstrous double cat." In the "Philosophical Transactions" for 1687 he gave a close estimate of the quantity of blood contained in the body, and he discovered several structures in the tunics of the eye, as acknow-
* In Todd's Roll of Graduates the name Allen Moylin appears as M.B. at the Spring Commencements in 1679, and the name Alan Mullin, or Allan Moline, appears as a B.A. in the Spring, 1676, and an M.D., Spring, 1784. These entries no doubt refer to the one person, and not to three as they Beem to imply.
SIR WILLIAM MOLYNEUX — HON. ROBERT BOYLE. 11
ledged by Albert Haller, one of the earlier systematic writers on the eye. His dissection of a human subject is also recorded.
The founder of the Philosophical Society, William Molyneux, was born in Dublin in 1656, and died in that city October 11, 1698. He graduated in Trinity College, and became a barrister. He wrote a paper on the Microscopic Examination of the Blood and on the Lacerta Aquatica.* His younger brother Thomas was born in Dublin, educated in its University, and studied subsequently at Leyden. He held the offices of President of the College of Physicians, Professor of Physic in the University, State Physician, and Physician-General. In 1730 he was created a baronet (being the first medical man who received that honour in Ireland). He died on the 19th October, 1733. The name of Molyneux is illustrious in the annals of Irish medicine. Arch- bishop King said of him that he was " the most eminent physician in this kingdom, yet not more remarkable for his skill in his art than for his piety and virtue." Distinguished for the variety of his talents and the extent of his erudition, he has been termed the " father of Irish medicine," and is equally deserving of the title of the father of Irish archaeology. The extent of his classical learning may be inferred from the fact of the Royal Society publishing his explanation of an obscure passage in one of Horace's Odes. The more purely medical writings of Molyneux were as follows : — On stone in the bladder, epidemic influenza, and the short fever of 1688. He described the Irish elk, the Irish greyhound, the aphrodite, and the Connaught locust. He also wrote a paper on the vesiculse seminales. His botanical essays were numerous.
The Honourable Robert Boyle, who was facetiously styled the "father of chemistry and son of the Earl of Cork," published several papers relating to matters of medical interest in the "Philosophical Transactions" from 1665 to 1690. It is remark- able that he noticed the evolution of ammonia (" alkaline spirit") from the blood, and he considered that the fluidity of the blood was due to its alkalinity — a theory revived lately by Dr. Benjamin Richardson, F.R.S.
* Phil. Trans. Vol. IV., p. 177.
12
VALENTINE GREATRAKES — BELLON — ALLEN.
Valentine Greatrakes, a country gentleman, born in the county of Waterford in 1628, created a great sensation by bis reputed power of healing disease, especially the king's evil, by stroking the affected parts. He was sent for by members of the royal family, and his operations were performed before the Royal Society. Many of the most eminent scientific men of the day testified to the wonderful cures which he effected — amongst others, Robert Boyle, the author of the Sceptical Chemist.
A Dutch physician named Bellon was the author of " The Irish Spa : being a Short Discourse on Mineral Waters ; with a way of improving by art weakly impregnated Mineral Waters, and brief account of the Mineral Water at Chappel Izod, near Dublin, &c. By P. Bellon, Doctor in Physick. Dublin : Printed by J. R. for M. Gunne, at the Bible and Crown in Castle-street, and Nath. Tarrant, at the King's Arms, Castle-street. 1684." 8vo. Pp.76. Bellon's book is not worth much, but it is interesting as an example of Dublin printing in the seventeenth century. The Worth Library in Steevens' Hospital is the only one in Ireland which contains a copy of Bellon's book. Another copy is in the library of the London College of Surgeons.
Charles Allen, who styles himself Professor of the Teeth, wrote a treatise entitled " The Operation for the Teeth, showing how to Preserve the Teeth and Gums from all Accidents, &c, as also the Description and Use of the Pollican, &c, &c." This book was printed in 1686 by Andrew Crook and Samuel Helsham for Robert Thornton, bookseller, at the " Leather Bottel," Skinner 's- row, Dublin. It comprises 60 quarto pages, and is dedicated to the " most honourable and truly learned the physitians, chirugeons, and apothecaries of the city of Dublin." The book bears the imprimatur of the Archbishop of Dublin. The author states that he may be consulted at the Smiths' Arms in Essex-street, where he lodges.
Allen also published a treatise — a quarto volume — in Dublin, in 1686, entitled "A Physical Discourse, wherein the Reason of the Beating of the Pulse or Pulsation of the Arteries, together with those of the Circulation of the Blood, are mechanically explained."
PHILIPS — PRATT — JONES — SIR HANS SLOANE.
13
George Philips, a gentleman of the county of Londonderry, published in London, in 1691, "A Problem concerning the Gout." 8vo.
Joseph Pratt, M.D., who studied at Ley den and practised in Dublin, published in the former city, in 1692, a quarto volume containing his inaugural address. He dedicated it to his father and to the Bishop of Meath. Leprosy was Pratt's theme.
In 1697 an inaugural dissertation, read before Trinity College, Dublin, by John Jones, M.D., was published in Dublin. It was entitled " Speciatim Vero de Dysenteria Hibernica."
The celebrated Sir Hans Sloane, successor to Newton in the Presidency of the Royal Society and President of the Royal College of Physicians, London, we can claim as an Irishman. He was born at Killyleagh, county of Down, 16th April, 1660, and studied medicine in Paris and London. He was created a baronet and appointed physician to the king. Sloane died at the age of ninety-two. He published many valuable papers, and his great work on the " Natural History of Jamaica" was the means of introducing many useful drugs into the Pharmacopoeia.
CHAPTER IT.
MEDICAL BIBLIOGRAPHY IN IRELAND DURING THE EIGHTEENTH
CENTURY.
Very few works relating to medicine proper or its correlated sciences were published in Ireland during the first quarter of this century, but after that period a year seldom elapsed without the issue of one or more books relating to medicine. Many of them were reprints of the works of English or foreign authors. In the last century there was no copyright law common to Great Britain and Ireland ; hence it was a common practice to reprint valuable books immediately after their publication in England. To protect themselves against this smart practice, English authors occasionally published their works in Dublin, or brought them out simul- taneously in London and Dublin. Erasmus Darwin (grandfather of a greater Darwin), for instance, published his great work on the laws of organic life simultaneously in England and Ireland
In 1701 John Purcell, M.D., Dublin, published in London a curious book on Hysteria, which was reprinted in Dublin in 1703. He also published in London, in 1702, a treatise on the Colic, which passed through several editions, and so late as 1772 was translated into German at Naarden.
In 1710 Sir Thomas Molyneux brought under the notice of the Royal Society a case of the extraction of a bodkin from the female bladder. The operator was Thomas Proby, chirurgeon-general, ancestor of the Earls of Carysfort, County of Wicklow. The Royal Military Hospital, Phoenix Park, stands on the site of Proby's house. He was deprived of it by the Lord Lieutenant, the Earl of Wharton, for which the latter received a severe casti- gation from Dean Swift, in his " Short Character of Thomas Earl of Wharton."
PRECEDENCE OF MEDICAL MEN.
15
In 1720 a book by an anonymous author was published by John Hyde, Dublin, 8vo, 30 pages. The author claims precedence for a doctor of physic over a doctor of laws, for a surgeon over an advocate, and for an apothecary over a proctor.
Up to the beginning of the nineteenth century it was usual to write "Esquire" after the names of physicians, and to put the more humble prefix of "Mr." to surgeons and apothecaries. For example, in 1785, we find the officers of St. Patrick's (commonly called Swift's) Hospital described as follows : — Physician, Robert Emmet, Esq., State Physician; Surgeon, Mr. John Whiteway; Apothecary, Mr. Edward Pannel ; Receiver of the rents, Charles Hamilton, Esq.
So long as Samuel Croker King was merely Surgeon to Dr. Steevens' Hospital he was plain Mr. King, but when he became a Governor of the Institution he was soon promoted to the dignity of the squirearchy. Shortly after the foundation of the College of Surgeons the surgeons began to drop the prefix "Mr.," but did not, in connexion with institutions at least, assume the affix of " Esquire." The first institution in Dublin of which the surgeons were honoured with the title of "Esquire" in connexion with their official designation was the Government Lock Hospital, established in 1792. Early in the present century all the surgeons to the Dublin hospitals were dubbed "Esquire," but the apothecaries and dentists were still styled "Mr." They, too, will soon become "Esquire" — in fact, in one hospital that affix is now attached to the name of the apothecary. The Irish surgeon still, as a rule, puts "Mr. So-and-so" on his visiting cai'd, but he would justly feel offended if, in addressing a letter to him, he were styled "Mr." on the superscription.
In former times physicians, as a rule, were graduates of Univer- sities, whilst surgeons learnt their art just as the goldsmith or the tailor did — namely, by an apprenticeship to a master ; hence the surgeons were classed with the higher ranks of tradesmen and the physicians with the members of the liberal professions. This is the reason why surgeons did not receive until after their incor- poration into a Royal College the title of " Esquire." The College
16
MEDICAL WORKS PUBLISHED IN 1721-1725.
of Physicians has precedence of the College of Sui'geons, though surgery is probably the most ancient branch of the healing art. From the account which Homer has given of the sons of Esculapius acting as surgeons to the Greek army, Celsus infers that surgery is the earliest department of the healing art. These surgeons were not employed in treating diseases or combating the plagues, but solely in the healing of wounds by incisions and local applications.
An Essay on the Plague, &c. By Richard Boulton, M.D. Dublin : 1721. 12mo. Pp. 43. |He endeavours to account for the plague, and gives advice with regard to its prevention.
The Late Dreadful Plague at Marseilles. Dublin : Thomas Hume, Smock-alley. 1721. (A reprint.)
An Essay on the Gout. By George Cheyne, M.D. Dublin : G. Grierson, at the Two Bibles in Essex-street. 1721. 8vo. Pp. 80. (A reprint.)
A Collection of Essays on Inoculation, with Introduction. By Dr. D. Cumyng. Dublin : Grierson, Essex-street. 1722. 8vo. Pp. 48.
An Account of the Success of Inoculating the Smallpox. By John Nettleton, M.D. Dublin : G. Grierson. 1722. 8vo. Pp.72.
An Account of Inoculation of Smallpox in the North of Eng- land. By Benjamin Colman. Dublin. 1722. 8vo.
In 1722 Surgeon Peter Derante, of Waterford, published an account of the amputation of the shoulder-joint by the sloughing of a portion of the scapula and head of the femur.
An Historical Introduction to the Inoculation of Smallpox. By Daniel Neale. Dublin ; G. Grierson. 1722. 8vo.
An Essay on the Water and Air of Ballyspillan (Johnstown), Co. Kilkenny. By John Burges, M.D. 1725. This spa was described by Dr. Taaffe in 1724.
Some Remarks on a Bill for regulating the Practice of Physick, Surgery, and Pharmacy. Dublin. 1725. No author's or printer's name appears on this pamphlet. The bill referred to proposed to restrain surgeons and apothecaries from giving internal remedies.
Bryan Robinson graduated in medicine in the University of
bryan robinson's works.
17
Dublin in 1707, and subsequently became Professor of Physic in T.C.D., and President of the College of Physicians in 1718 and 1739. He died in 1754. Portraits of him are preserved in the College of Physicians and in the Provost's House, T.C.D. He was highly appreciated in his time. Robinson was the author of the following works : —
Case of Five Children who were Inoculated in Dublin by Small- pox. Dublin: George Grierson, Essex-street. 1725. 8vo. Pp. 8. All the children became very ill and two died.
A Treatise on the Animal ^Economy. Dublin. 1732. A second edition, consisting of 338 pages, appeared in 1734.
An Answer to Dr. Morgan's Strictures on the Animal Economy. Dublin. 1735. 8vo.
A Dissertation on the -/Ether of Sir Isaac Newton. Dublin. 1743. 8vo. Pp. 144.
A Dissertation on the Food and Discharges of the Human Body. Dublin : Printed by S. Powell. 1747. 8vo. Pp. 120.
Observations on the Operations and Virtues of Medicine. Dublin: Ewings, Dame-street ; Smith, Dame-street ; and Faulkner, Essex-street. 1752. 8vo. Pp.216.
A Continuation of the Treatise on the Animal ^Economy. Dublin. 8vo. Pp. 491.
Robinson's work on the Animal .^Economy was a remarkable one for its day. He was an ardent admirer of Sir Isaac Newton, and endeavoured to account for animal motions and even the rational treatment of diseases on Newtonian principles. In modern times it has been demonstrated that muscular power is only one of the many phases of force or motion. Heat is convertible into light, light into magnetism, magnetism into electricity, and so on. Animal motive power, including those movements of the heart, blood, &c, which are inseparable from vitality, are derived from the force or energy stored up in food.
Under the influence of the mysterious forces which have their abiding place in the sunbeam, plants decompose mineral inert sub- stances, such as water, nitric acid, and cai'bonic acid, and convert them into organic bodies, such as oil, sugar, cellulose, albumen, &c.
c
18 SMITH, CHEYNE, AND THRELKELD's WORKS.
These substances are reservoirs of force or energy derived from the great fountain of force — the sun. When they are dis- organised in the bodies of animals, or consumed as fuel beneath the boilers of a locomotive, heat and motive power are set free. Robinson attributes to the vibrations of an ethereal fluid per- vading the animal body (as it permeates all kinds of matter) the production of animal or muscular power. The theoiy is essentially the same with modern views as to the production of muscular force. A still more recent one is that which assumes animal motive power and all telluric phenomena to be caused by vortices in the aether. According to this theory matter is merely movement in the aether. Robinson would have appreciated these transcendental doctrines.
The chapter on respiration is a remarkable one. He speaks in it of a certain portion of the air, which he calls the acid part, mixing with the blood in the lungs and being essential to life. Oxygen was not discovered until thirty-one years after the appearance of Robinson's book.
The Curiosities of Common Water ; or the advantages thereof in preventing and curing many diseases. By John Smith, CM* Dublin: Gr. Ewing, Dame-street. 1725. 8vo. The fourth edition of this work was published in London, 1723. It is interesting as a very early work on •hydropathy.
Remarks on Dr. Cheyne's Essay on Health. By a Fellow of the Royal Society. 3rd Edition. Dublin : W. Smith, at the Dutchess's Head, Dame-street. 1725. Pp. 35. (A reprint.)
An Account of the Royal Hospital of Charles n., near Dublin, for relief of the Maimed of the Army of Ireland. By Richard Colley. Dublin. 1725. 12mo.
Synopsis Stirpium Hiberniearum Alphabetica Dispositarum sive Commentatio de Plantis Indigenis praesertius Dublinensibus insti- tuta. By Caleb Threlkeld, M.D. Dublin : F. Davy, Ross-lane. 1726. 8vo. In this book the names of 535 species of plants, mostly of those growing spontaneously in the county of Dublin, are given in Latin, English, and Irish. The properties of the plants are described, and there is an appendix of 60 pages, con-
* Master of Chirurgery — a diploma conferred by the Preach Academy of Surgery.
SIR EDWARD BARRY.
19
taining original observations upon plants by Dr. W. Molyneux. Threlkeld's book abounds in quaint aphorisms and remarks, more frequently moral or political than botanical or medical. This work was the first of the kind printed in Ireland. The author, a botanist of some eminence, was born in Cumberland in 1676. He was first a dissenting clergyman, but subsequently graduated in medicine in Edinburgh about 1712, and settled in Dublin, where he soon attained to a good position as a practitioner. He died in Mark's- alley on the 28th April, 1728.
Inoculating the Smallpox. By John Smyth. Dublin. 12 mo. It bears no date, but it was published before 1730, as the volume is contained in the Worth Library, which was formed previous to that year.
One of the most distinguished of the Irish medical writers of the last century was Sir Edward Barry, Bart. Having studied under Boerhaave at Leyden, he graduated in medicine in the University of that city. He took the degree of A.B. in 1717, and of M.B. and M.D. in 1740, in the University of Dublin, and on the 22nd July of the latter year was made a Member of the College of Physicians, of which he became President in 1749. He was Regius Professor of Physic in Trinity College, 1754-1761, and served the office of Physician-General to *the King's Forces in Ireland. In 1762 he removed to London, and subsequently spent some time abroad. He was created a baronet on the 6th July, 1775, and died at Bath, 29th March, 1776. His son, Nathaniel, was President of the College of Physicians during his father's lifetime. In the annals of the College he affords the only instance of a son of a President succeeding his father during the lifetime of the latter. The baronetcy became extinct a few years ago. Barry wrote the following works : —
A Treatise on Consumption of the Lungs. George Grierson, Essex-street, Dublin. 1726. 8vo. Pp. 228. In the preface to this scholarly production he spells his name Berry, but on the title -page the spelling is Barry. In those days they were not particular in the orthography of men's names. The book is dated "Corke, 1725." In 1727 he published a Treatise on Consumption
20
SIR EDWARD BARRY'S WORKS.
of the Lungs, " with a previous account of nutrition and the structure and use of the Lungs." 8vo. Pp. 276.
Barry states that under certain conditions consumption is con- tagious, but that unlike the acute fevers its infective action is slow. He refers to a theory of the causation of the disease, which is essentially the same as that lately advanced by Koch and others. Quoting from Martin's book on consumption, page 57 et seq., he says: — "Ulcers in the lungs, when narrowly viewed with micro- scopes, are covered with several insects, and from thence concludes that they take their first origene from such animalcules, which, being inspired with the air, fix their situation on the lungs and erode and ulcerate their vessels." Barry rejects this hypothesis on the ground that the atmosphere teams with minute organisms which enter the body, but have no permanent abiding place therein, unless in disorganised structures incapable of resisting their attack. What were the " animalcules " seen by Martin ? They were probably not the bacilli of tuberculosis, as tissue-staining was unknown 160 years ago.
Barry's other works were published in London ; they comprise a Treatise on the Digestions, &c, of the Body, 1759, 8vo, pp. 434 (it reached a second edition in 1763), and (in 1775) a large work on Wines and Medicinal Waters, containing numerous illustrations, and embracing 479 large octavo pages.
Medicina Vindicata, or Eeflections on Bleeding, Vomiting, and Purging in the beginning of Fevers, Smallpox, Pleurisies, and other Acute Diseases. Dublin: Gr. Grierson. 1727. 8vo. Pp. 56. This little volume was published anonymously, but its author was Dr. Humphrey Markwell, a Dublin practitioner. He con- demns the practice of indiscriminate venesection which prevailed in his days, and considers that it would be desirable to render blood-letting in smallpox a penal offence unless when performed under medical direction. Although the author avoids offending the faculty by directly charging them with being too free in the use of the lancet, it is evident that phlebotomy, as usually practised by either regular medical men or unqualified persons, is not approved of by him. That blood was shed freely by the lancet a century
BLEEDING. — DR. MARKWELL's WORKS.
21
after Markwell wrote may be inferred from the following obituary notice which appeared in the ordinary place for such announce- ments in Saunders's News- Letter, Dublin, October 22, 1822: —
" After an illness of ten years' duration, during which she was bled upwards of 500 times, Mary, only daughter of William Moore, Esq., of Grimeshill, near Kirkby, Lonsdale.''
In the last century it was a common practice to bleed daily during the first two or three days of an illness, notwithstanding that the pulse was soft and the character of the disease asthenic. Truly did Ward say in his " Diary " that " physicians make bleeding as the overture to the play."
Madame de Sevigne, in her charming " Letters," writes of the Chevalier de Grignan, who was seized with smallpox of the most malignant kind. The physicians immediately proceeded to their favourite practice of blood-letting, the repetition of which, in consequence of the dreadful aggravation of the symptoms which it produced, the patient endeavoured, but ineffectually, to resist. Having been depleted eleven times, he yielded " to the combined attack of the doctors and the disease, and expired a victim to obstinacy and ignorance."
Markwell was not the first to denounce phlebotomy. At a remote period the disciples of Pythagoras and Erasistratus were averse to blood-letting — a practice which appeal's to have pre- vailed even in those early ages. We must not, however, come to the conclusion that venesection is always inadmissible ; on the contrary, there are cases recorded in which the prompt removal of a few ounces of blood clearly saved the patients' lives.
Medicina Denudata. By Humphrey Markwell, M.D. Pub- lished by Watts, Sycamore-alley, Dublin. 1727. 8vo. Pp. 37.
Thomas Rutty was, it is believed, born in Wiltshire on the 25th December, 1697. He studied at Leyden under Boerhaave. In 1724 he settled in Dublin, and practised as a physician with but scant success, pecuniarily at least. He died unmarried in his house, Pill-kne, corner of Mary's-abbey, on the 26th April, 1775, and his remains were interred in the Quakers' burying ground, where now the College of Surgeons stands. He was a simple-
22
THOMAS RUTTY'S WORKS.
minded, unworldly, religious man, and was greatly respected by his contemporaries. He was a voluminous writer on chemistry, natural history, meteorology, and medicine. The following are his chief works : —
In 1730 he described a case of spina bifida in the " Philo- sophical Transactions."
An Essay towards a Natural, Experimental, and Medicinal History of the Mineral Waters of Ireland, &c. Dublin. 1757. 8vo. Pp. 478. It was published by subscription, and was subse- quently produced in quarto size.
Analysis of Milk and the different Species thereof. Dublin. 1762. Pp. 19. The information given as to the total amount of solids in cow's milk is pretty close to the modern determinations.
The Argument of Sulphur or no Sulphur in Water discussed, &c. Dublin : Printed by Alexander M'Cullah. 1762.
A Methodical Synopsis of Mineral Waters, &c. Dublin. 1762. Pp. 109.
A Chronological History of the Weather and Seasons, and of the Prevailing Diseases in Dublin, &c. Dublin. 1770. 8vo. Pp.340. The results of forty years' observations are recorded in this most valuable volume, which may still be consulted with advantage.
An Essay towards the Natural History of the County of . Dublin, &c. 2 vols. Pp. 392 and 488. Dublin: Printed by Slator, Castle-street. 1772. It is still a useful work for reference.
Putty became involved in a discussion with the celebrated Charles Lucas in reference to his statements concerning mineral waters. Several anonymous pamphlets appeared on the subject.
Putty's Opus Magnum, the result of forty years' labour, was a Materia Medica published in London in 1775 and shortly after- wards in Amsterdam. It contained 560 quarto pages. Being in Latin — a language then falling into disuse in medical writings — this work did not prove a decided success, though its merits were fully acknowledged.
Putty's " Spiritual Diary and Soliloquies " were published in London in 1777, and a second edition in 1796. They are worth perusal.
dr. rutty's researches — arbuthnot's work. 23
Rutty seems to have been the first to notice the presence of a sweet principle in the urine of persons affected with diabetes. He occasionally attended the meetings of the Royal Society, and at one of them, held on June 26th, 1731, he was thanked for reading a paper — the joint production of himself and Dr. Thomas Madden — on the effects of laurel water on human beings and dogs. The poisonous effects of laurel water were first noticed about this time in Dublin, where several persons were poisoned by drinking liqueur which contained a lai'ge proportion of that ingredient.
Rutty's observations on the effect of temperature upon disease showed that, in Dublin, inflammatory diseases of the throat and lungs were most rife in winter and spring, measles in spring and autumn, ague in spring, and diarrhoea and dysentery in autumn. As Rutty was not a dogmatist, nor a theorist unconsciously shaping his facts so as to suit his theory, his careful and voluminous accounts of the fevers of his day are well worthy of the study of the modern epidemiologist. In his treatise on the "Urinary Ways," he gives figures showing, probably for the first time, the distribution of arterial branches upon the anterior surface of the kidney. Baron Haller refers to Rutty's figures in his " Pathological Observations."
An Essay concerning the nature of Aliments, &c. By John Arbuthnot, M.D. Dublin. 1731. 8vo. Pp. 108. This book had a great circulation in the first half of the last century. The Dublin edition was a reprint by S. Powell, for no fewer than three booksellers, all having their shops in Dame-street. They were — George Risk, at the " Shakespear's Head; " George Ewing, at the "Angel and Bible;" and William Smith, at the "Hercules." Arbuthnot was a Scotchman, residing in London, and possessing some literary talent. He was one of Swift's most intimate friends. Lamenting the absence of his physician, the Dean wrote as follows : —
" Removed from kind Arbuthnot's aid, Who knows his art, but not his trade ; Preferring his regard for me Before his credit, or his fee."
24 DOVER, CHEYNE, ROGER, AND FERGUSON^ WORKS.
A Reply to Dr. Robinson's Answer. Dublin : James Thompson, next Lucas1 Coffee-house. 1732-3. 8vo. Pp. 51. (Refers to Robinson's book, already noticed.)
The Ancient Physician's Legacy to his Country. By Thomas Dover, M.D. 4th ed. Reprinted by G. Faulkner, Essex-street, Dublin. 1733. 8vo. Pp. 89. The author complains of the practices of his brother practitioners, but owns that he himself has committed a grave error in always recommending the same apothecary to his patients.
In 1733 Dr. George Cheyne's well-known work on the "English Malady" was reprinted in Dublin by G. Ewing and W. Smith, Dame-street.
An Essay on Epidemic Diseases, and more particularly the Endemical Epidemics of the City of Cork, &c, &c. By Joseph Rogers, M.D. Dublin : William Smith, at the Hercules, in Dames's-street. 1734. 8vo. Pp. 310. Rogers practised in Cork. He was opposed to the Galenical, chemical, and mechani- cal theories of medicine. He was liberal in his allowance of stimulants to patients suffering from fevers. In the case of a young person he states that he gave daily for a month from four to six quarts of sack whey and two quarts of mulled canary. That was " feeding fever " with a vengeance 1 Rogers held that fevers were the results of specific poisons, and blamed the ill- kept slaughter-houses for producing some of those poisons.
In 1734 Mr. John Ferguson, of Strabane, published in the Philosophical Transactions an account of the partial extirpation of the human spleen.
Botanalogia Universalis Hibernica, or a General Irish Herbalist, &c, &c. Authore Joh. K'Eogh, A.B., Chaplain to the Rt. Hon. the Lord Kingston. Corke : Printed and sold by George Har- rison, at the corner of Meetinghouse-lane. 1735. 8vo. Pp.177. K'Eogh was a fair botanist, but his work is not so valuable as Threlkeld's or Wades' treatise. He apologises for writing a medical book, being a clergyman, not a physician, but he excuses himself on the ground that he studied medicine during ten years.
Zoologica Medicinalis Hibernica, &c. To which is added a
k'eogh, cope, and Stephens' works.
25
short treatise on the diagnostic and prognostic parts of medicine. By John K'Eogh, A.B. James Kelburn, George's-lane, Dublin. 1739. 8vo. Pp. 210. K'Eogh in this book gives the names of all the animals (beasts, birds, fishes, reptiles, insects, &c.) in Latin, English, and Irish. The medicinal applications of many of these animals are described.
K'Eogh wrote an interesting book — A Vindication of the Anti- quities of Ireland, published in 1748 by S. Powell, Dublin. Mr. Keogh, one of the librarians in the National Library, Kildare- street, is a direct descendant of this author.
Demonstratio Medico-Practica Prognosticorum Hippocratis, &c. By Henry Cope, M.D. Dublin. 1736. 8vo. Pp. 320. Cope was State Physician and had an extensive practice. He became a Licentiate of the College of Physicians in 1718, a Fellow in 1823, and President of it in 1728 and 1740. He died in 1743.
Dokeus upon the Cure of Gout by Milk Diet. To which is prefixed an Essay upon the Diet. By William Stephens, M.D., F.R.S., F.K. & Q.C.P. The author was Physician to the Royal Hospital, and Lecturer on Botany in Trinity College. He trans- lated Dola?us' book and criticised it. It was printed for J. Smith and W. Bruce, on the Blind-quay (now Lower Exchange-street), Dublin, in 1738, but London appears on the title-page. It includes 182 pages.
On the Success of Mrs. Stephens' Medicines for the Stone. Belfast: James Blow. 1739. 8vo. Parliament bought Mrs. Stephens' receipt.
A little book of 80 pages, entitled "Pharmacomastix," by Dr. Charles Lucas, M.P., was published by S. Powell and Abraham Bradley, at the Two Bibles, Dame-street, Dublin, in 1741. It was chiefly a tirade against ignorant and dishonest apothecaries and drug-sellers. At that time the physicians complained of the intrusion into their province of apothecaries who had received no regular medical education. Lucas mentions that Paris, which was six times more populous than Dublin, had only eight or ten apothecaries more than the latter.
26 LUCAS, BERKELEY, AND NIIIELL's WORKS.
Lucas's Essay on Mineral Waters bears no date. It was com- posed of three volumes, containing in all 874 pages. He wrote two tracts of a polemical character on mineral waters, one of which is entitled " A Second Letter to the learned and ingenious Dr. Rutty." Printed by G. and A. Ewing. Dublin. 1763.
Lucas was an M.D. of both Leyden and Dublin Universities' and a Member of the London College of Physicians, yet he practised as an apothecary. He was a very eloquent and patriotic man, and a statue erected to his memory may be seen in the City Hall, Cork-hill. He died on the 4th November, 1771, and was interred in St. Michan's Church.
In 1741 a third edition of Dr. George Cheyne's work on the Gout was reprinted by G. Grierson in Dublin.
Siris : a Chain of Philosophical Reflections concerning the Virtues of Tar Water. By G. L. B. O. C. (George Lord Bishop of Cloyne). Dublin. 1742. 8vo. In 1744 a second and corrected edition was printed for the author by Margaret Rhames, and published by R. Gunne, Capel-street. 8vo, pp. 150. The Bishop (Berkeley) contributed two little tracts to it in 1744 and 1753. About this time there was a discussion raging anent the medicinal qualities of tar water.
James Nihell, a Limerick surgeon, published in London, in 1742, a Treatise on the Pulse. He died in 1759.
A Treatise on Midwifery. By Fielding Ould, Man-midwife. Dublin : Printed by and for Oli. Nelson, at Milton's Head, in Skinners'-row, and for Charles Connor, at Pope's Head, at Essex- gate. 1742. In three parts. 8vo. Pp. 203.
Fielding Ould, the son of a captain in the army, was boi'n in Galway about 1710. His mother was a member of a Galway family named Shawe. Of his early education little is known, but it is believed that he studied on the Continent. He settled in Dublin about 1736, and for many years resided in Golden-lane. He attained to a large practice, became Master of the Lying-in Hospital in 1759, and was knighted in the same year by the Duke of Bedford, Lord Lieutenant. The knighthood conferred upon Ould suggested the subject of the following witty epigram : —
SIR FIELDING OULD.
27
" Sir Fielding Ould is made a knight, He should have been a lord by right ; For then each lady's prayer would be — O Lord, good Lord, deliver me ! "
The College of Physicians had, since the year 1701, examined the candidates for medical degrees in the University, but being requested by the Board of Trinity College to examine Field, they refused to do so on the ground that the practice of midwifery was derogatory to the dignity of the profession of medicine. The College of Physicians persisting in their refusal to examine Field, the University dispensed with their assistance, and conferred the degree of M.B. upon him. Sir Robert Scott, Dr. Fleury, and other obstetricians were refused admission to the College of Physicians, and that body, after what we may term the Ould embroglio, ceased to be the medical examiners for the University degree.
The absurdity of tabooing a medical man because he practised the obstetric art was, in 1775, poetically exposed by Gilborne. The particular reference in the following lines is to a Dr. Sproull, who had a great reputation, and had been a distinguished surgeon in the army : —
" The College him a Fellow would announce, Condition this, to Midwifery renounce ; Eenounce but sooner he would his Right Hand Than from the Service of the Fair disband. Why may not any Doctor that would chuse For Man's Relief his total knowledge use, Or does one Portion of Apollo's Trade More than the rest his votaries degrade ? "
Long before the close of the century the absurd disabilities imposed upon the obstetricians were removed. Ould, Scott, and Fleury became Licentiates of the College, and the Presidency was, in 1785, conferred upon Francis Hopkins, Master of the Lying-in Hospital, the author of the Midwifery Vade Mecum, published in London in 1811. Ould d icd in his house in Frederick-street (South) on the 29th November, 1789, and was interred in St. Anne's Church.
Ould's Treatise was long considered to be one of the best works
28 SOUTHWELL— CURRY. — PHYSICO-HISTORICAL SOCIETY.
of the kind in the English language. In it is pointed out for the first time the true position and relations of the child during natural labour. The face during its transit through the pelvis is directed towards one side or the other of the pelvis, and not, as was formerly supposed, towards the sacrum. He invented a perforating instru- ment termed the terrebra occulta ; it was, however, too weak and small for its purpose.
Remarks on some of the Errors both in Anatomy and Practice contained in a late Treatise on Midwifery, published by F. O., Man-midwife. Bv Thomas Southwell, M.D. and Man-midwife. Dublin: Thomas Bacon, Essex-street. 1742. 12mo. Pp. 48. An attack on Ould's work, to which, indeed, he left himself open with respect to his anatomical knowledge ; but F. Ould's work was not sensibly injured by this attack from his neighbour. Southwell, as well as Ould, lived in Golden-lane, which is now the abode of dealers in second-hand and cheap boots. Its decayed houses are low-class tenemental dwellings. On the 8th of April, 1885, I had the honour of conducting the Prince of Wales and his eldest son through some of the worst of them. One house which he visited was formerly the Goldsmith's Hall — hence, probably, the term Golden-lane. In 1764 Southwell published in London four volumes of Medical Essays and Observations.
An Essay on the Ordinary Fevers. By John Curry, M.D. Oliver Nelson, Skinner's-row. Dublin. 1743. 8vo. Pp. 75.
A Brief Account of Scorbutic Fever. By John Curry, M.D. Dublin : Oliver Nelson, Skinner's-row. 1749. 8vo. Pp. 40. The author endeavours to prove that the so-called scorbutic fever was identical with the little fever. Curry graduated at Rheims, and practised in Dublin. Several polemical works in defence of the Catholics emanated from his pen. He died in 1780.
In 1744 the Physico-Historical Society commenced their short life of three years' duration. Some papers relating to mineral waters were read before them.
Maurice O'Connell, M.D., a contemporary of Robinson, was educated abroad, and at Oxford and London, and settled in Cork about 1721. He attained to a very extensive practice in the
O'CONNELL. — TAR WATER. — THE PHARMACOPOEIA. 29
South of Ireland, and died in North Abbey, Cork, on the 16th April, 1763.
O'Connell, early in life, appears to have come to the conclusion that, however useful reading might be, the bedside was the best place to study disease properly; hence he was much devoted to clinical studies in the hospitals. He published the following work : — Morborum Acutorum et Chronicorum, quorundum Obser- vationes Medicinales Experimentales, Sedula compleirium annorum praxi turn coriagiae turn in locis circumjacentibus exaulata com- probatse. Dublin. 1746. 8vo. Pp.416. In this treatise O'Connell describes the dreadful pestilence of 1740, and the work may with advantage be read at the present time. He was opposed to free phlebotomy in the treatment of fevers, but, unlike Graves, was not disposed to "feed" them. He believed in the "epidemic constitution" of the atmosphere giving rise to fevers.
In 1746 Thomas Prior published in Dublin a volume of 248 octavo pages on the success of tar water as a remedial agent. It includes two letters on this subject from the pen of Bishop Berkeley.
The first Pharmacopoeia which appeared in Ireland was a reprint of that of the London College of Physicians, brought out in 1746 by P. Wilson and J. Esdell, Dublin. Wilson produced another in 1772. In 1774 an edition of it was published in Dublin under the authority of the King and Queen's College of Physicians. In 1778 W. Gilbert published another edition. The London Pharmacopoeia and a translation of it, by John Healde, M.D., appeared in Dublin in 1778.
A curious little book, entitled " Pharmacopoeia Pauperum Dub- liniensis,1' was published in 1789 by John Exshaw. It consists of 32 pages of letterpress printed on one side only of the leaves.
In 1794 the King and Queen's College of Physicians issued a limited number of the Specimen Pharmacopoeia Collegii Medi- corum Regio et Reginge Hibernia. Dublin : Apud R. E. Mercier et Soc. 8vo. Pp. 186. It was submitted tentatively to the profession in order to elicit their opinions in reference to it. With some alterations it re-appeared in 1791, and again early in the
OF BRISTOL
"medicine
30
BOOKS ON SMALLPOX. — SILVESTEE O'HALLORAN.
next century. The College of Surgeons refused to join in its preparation.
A Physical Dissertation on Drowning. By a Physician. Dublin : P. Wilson, " Gay's Head," Dame-street, and E. Jackson, Meath- street. 1747. 8vo. Pp. 69. (Evidently a reprint.)
In 1748 Exshaw reprinted a translation into English from the Latin of Dr. F. Oloss' work on Smallpox (8vo, pp. 215), and Dr. W. Watson's work on Inoculation of Smallpox. 8vo. Pp. 131.
The Uncertainty of the Signs of Death (anon.). Dublin. 1748.
Silvester O'Halloran was born in Limerick on the 31st December, 1728. He sprang from a race long distinguished for their ability and learning. Of his early general education little is known ; but it is certain that whilst a very young man he studied medicine in the schools of London, Paris, and Leyden. Whilst in Paris he wrote a treatise on Glaucoma, which he subsequently submitted to Dr. Meade, of London, and was recommended by that celebrated man to publish it. It accordingly appeared under the title of " A New Treatise on Glaucoma," by Silvester* O'Halloran, Surgeon, Limerick. Printed by S. Powell, Crane-lane, Dublin. 1750. 8vo. Pp. 115. The illustrations in this book show that the engraver's art was highly cultivated in Dublin in the middle of the last century — at present so low has it fallen that a steel or copperplate engraving from, say, a portrait in oils, could not be executed in this city. This treatise is frequently quoted by Haller. O'Halloran is the author of the following works : —
Critical Analysis of the New Operations for Catai'act. Dublin : S. Powell. 8vo. 1755. Pp. 39.
A Concise and Impartial Account of the Advantages arising to the Public from the general use of a New Method of Amputa- tion. Dublin : S. Powell. 1763. 8vo. Pp. 13.
A Complete Treatise on Gangrene and Sphacelus. With a New Method of Amputation. Limerick :• A. Walsh. 1765. It was republished in the same year in London by Mr. Vaillant.
* So printed in all his works, but in the Minute Book of the Examiners of Candidate- Surgeons to County Infirmaries, and in his letters, it is written Sylvester.
o'hallokan's works.
31
A New Treatise on the Different Disorders arising from External Injuries to the Head, as necessarily require the operation of the trephine. Dublin: W. Gilbert, Great George's-sfcreet. 1793. 8vo. Pp. 335.
In the second and fourth volumes of the Transactions of the Royal Irish Academy there are several articles from O'Halloran's pen; and amongst the MSS. preserved in the Library of the Academy there is a quarto volume on the Atmosphere by this able author.
O'Halloran wrote a History of Ireland, which attained to the honour of a fourth edition, and is still often quoted. In the Intro- duction to his Antiquities of Ireland he displays great erudition. As a litterateur, his style combines elegance of diction, with vigour in description ; but it would be manifestly out of place to dwell here upon the purely literary merits of this versatile writer.
O'Halloran's writings on the surgery of the eye are very learned. He shows that Petit was not, as generally believed, the first to extract an opaque crystalline, that operation having been described by an Arabian physician, Jesus Hali Arculanus, and other ancient authors. His method for an operation for removal of cataract was admitted to be one of the best, if not the best. He invented a knife, intended to supersede the scissors of Daviel, at that time in great repute with oculists, but open to many objections. The instrument was doubled and slightly concave on the flat side of the blade. He says — " With the concave part next me I pierce the sclerotica, very near the edge of the cornea — suppose the third of a line — at either the external or internal canthus, according to the eye to be operated." His method of operating in glaucoma was considered remarkably good when it was proposed, though most of the anatomical and physiological discovery to which he laid claim has not been conceded to him by more recent writers. His practice as an oculist was considerable. O'Halloran was the first writer who demonstrated that ti'ephining was unnecessary in certain cases of depression of the bone. He had unusually favourable opportunities of studying cranial fractures, for in his
32
DOCTORS CLANCY AND MEAD'S WRITINGS.
time Whiteboyism and faction-fighting flourished, and contributed scores of cracked crowns to the Limerick Infirmary. He was the first to perform amputation of the thigh by a long anterior flap, and a short posterior one, formed by a circular division of the soft structures. In 1848 this method was revived in France by MM. Sedillot and Baudens, and in England — but in a modified form — by Spence and Teale. O'Halloran allowed the wound to remain open for drainage for some days, a practice which has recently been advocated.
O'Halloran was Surgeon to the County of Limerick Infirmary from its establishment. Shortly after the foundation of the Royal College of Surgeons, he was unanimously elected an honorary member; and he was a member of most of the leading scientific societies in these countries. He died in his native city in August, 1807, and was interred in Kilready churchyard. A contemporary describes him as " the tall, thin doctor, in his quaint French dress, with his goldheaded cane, beautiful Parisian wig, and cocked hat." The Hibernian Magazine for 1807 states that he was a staunch adherent of the Hanoverian dynasty. Lieu- tenant-General Sir Joseph O'Halloran, who died about 1843 in London, was the last survivor of O'Halloran's children.
In 1750 Michael Clancy, M.D., published in Dublin his Memoirs and Travels, and a Latin Poem — Templina Veneris sive Amorum Rhapsodic. They are not devoid of interest to medical men.
Dr. Richard Mead's Medical Precepts and Cautions, translated from the Latin text by Thomas Stock, M.D., were reprinted in Dublin in 1751; and Mead's medical works were reprinted in Dublin in 1767. Mead, a celebrated London physician, realised, it is said, a professional income of £7,000 a year, yet so expensive were his tastes as a virtuosi, &c, that he never saved anything. In his old age he was indigent. It is related of him that he once asked Lord Orrery for a loan of five pounds, on the security of some little object of art made from cannel coal which he pro- duced from his pocket.
The State of Surgery and the Disadvantages its Professors lie under Considered. Dublin. 1752. 8vo. Anonymous.
RUSSELL, HAY, AND FLETCHER'S WORKS.
33
A Dissertation on the Use of Sea-water in the Diseases of the Glands, &c. Translated from the Latin of Richard Russell, M.D., by an eminent Physician. Dublin : G. Faulkner, Essex-street, and T. Exshaw, Cork-hill. 1753. 12mo. Pp. 204.
Deformity : An Essay. By William Hay. Dublin : G. Faulkner. 1754. 8vo. (A reprint.)
An Essay on Fever. By George Fletcher, M.D. Dublin : Matthew Williamson, Dame-street. 1755. 8vo. Pp. 33. The author resided in Stephen-street, and subsequently in North Cumberland-street. In 1738 he took a Scholarship in T.C.D. ; in 1740 he graduated in Arts, and in 1749 in Medicine, in Dublin. In 1752 he took the degree of M.D. In 1755 the College of Physicians granted him a licence.
In 1756 the Medico-Philosophical Society were established by Drs. Rutty and Smith, the Rev. Mr. Caldwell, and Surgeons Dowling and Johnson, with whom Dr. Knox and Surgeon Wetherell were soon after associated. They continued to meet until 1784. Three volumes of the minutes of their Transactions are preserved in the library of the Royal Irish Academy ; they contain 230 essays, of which 90 (chiefly relating to mineral waters) bear Rutty 's imprimatur. It is probable that the more important of the contents of these volumes has been published in books, pamphlets, &c. Other records of the Society are to be seen in the College of Physicians. In 1785 the Society were continued under the altered name of the Medical Society, the meetings of which were of a festive character. About 1831 they ceased to meet, in con- sequence of the death of Dr. John Beatty (their Secretary for 25 years), but in 1856 the Society were revived as a peripatic dining club — sometimes jocularly spoken of as the Philo-oesophageals. Business proceedings are confined to reading the minutes of the previous meeting, which merely record the locale of the dining- room and the names of the banqueters. The number of members is limited to twelve, and the dinners to seven in " the season " — i.e., from November to May. The rotation of the hosts is effected on the alphabetical system ; the host of the evening has the privilege of inviting guests and invariably exercises it. The original members of
D
34
MEDICAL DINING CLUBS.
the revived Society were — Sir Philip Crampton, Sir Henry Marsh, James W. Cusack, Robert Adams, William Stokes, W. (after- wards Sir William) Wilde, C. P. Croker, John Nugent, Hans Irvine, E. Hutton, Jolliffe Tufnell, and T. E. Beatty, Secretary. All, save Dr. Nugent and Jolliffe Tufnell, have gone over to the majority, and their places are now (June, 1885) occupied by John T. Banks, F. C. Cruise, S. Gordon, H. Head, G. H. Kidd, R. M'Donnell, B. F. MacDowel, Sir G. H. Porter, P. C. Smyly, and W. Stokes (junior). Mr. Tufnell is Secretary (since 1856). The corporate property of the Society consists of the minute book and a snuff-box, said to have once belonged to Charles Lucas, M.D., M.P.
Apropos of medical dining clubs, two others deserve to be recorded here. " Our Club," or the " Rough-and-Readys," were founded in 1847, by the late Hamilton Labatt, who acted as Secretary. With him were joined Messrs. Ferguson (who subse- quently went to Belfast), Fitzpatrick, H. Irvine, L'Estrange, O'B. Bellingham, J. Denham, H. Kennedy, and Grimshaw (father of the present Registrar-General). The club never had more than ten members, and usually consists of eight. The present members are — Messrs. Denham, M'Dowel, Swanzy, Armstrong, Baker, Keogh, Stokes, Thompson, and H. Kennedy (Secretary). They dine together and invite guests after the manner of the Medical Club.
In January, 1871, the following hospital officers associated for the purpose of dining together once a month : —Messrs. A. H. Corley, F. C. Cruise, James Little, T. Little, R. M'Donnell, Edward Mapother, Martin, Meldon, O'Grady, Swanzy, Tyrrell, and Walsh. The two last-named have passed away, as also has Dr. T. Hayden, who had filled Mr. Tyrrell's place. Drs. Fitzgerald and Hayes now make up the limited dozen. Of late years they have dined four times each Summer at St. Anne's Monastery, Bohernabrena — a picturesque spot ten miles away on the Dublin mountains — and their hospitable call to their professional brethren is rarely disobeyed. At an extra dinner on one occasion, visitors so distinguished as Professor Charcot, Sir Andrew Clarke, Sir W. MacCormac, Dr. Evory Kennedy, and Dr. Southey, were present.
BOOKS ON SMALLPOX. — MARRYATT AND CLOSSY'S WORKS. 35
Thoughts on Inoculation. By William Bromfeild. Dublin : William Colles, Dame-street. This work bears no date, but is evidently a reprint of a work published in London in 1757 by Mr. Bromfeild, Surgeon to the Queen.
A collection of articles by English and foreign writers relating to smallpox, collected by Dr. Maty, F.R.S., were printed by J. Exshaw, Dame-street, Dublin, in 1758.
Di\ Gattis' work on Inoculation, translated from the French by Dr. Maty. Published in Dublin by J. Exshaw in 1759. 8vo. Pp. 66.
History of Health and the Means of Preserving it. By J ames Mackenzie. Dublin. 1759. 8vo. (A reprint.)
In 1760 a third edition of Dr. Storcks' (of Vienna) work on Hemlock was reprinted in Dublin by J. Exshaw. 8vo. Pp. 80.
The New Practise of Physick. Founded upon Irrefragable Principles, and Confirmed by Long and Painful Experience. By Thomas Marryatt, M.D. Sold by S. Powell, in Dame-street, Dublin. 1760. Quarto. Another edition was published in 1764 by Watson, at the Poet's Head, Caple (Capel) street. This work was sold at the respectable price of one guinea. The author prac- tised in Dublin for some years. In 1784 he brought out in Bir- mingham a quarto work on Therapeutics ; the publishers were Pierson and Rollason.
Theory and Practise of Surgical Pharmacy. Dublin : George and Alexander Grierson. 1761. 8vo. Pp. 384. No author's name appears on the title-page of this book, which is probably a reprint.
Practical Observations on the Use of Goats' Whey. By James Kennedy, M.D. Dublin. 1762. 8vo. Pp. 21. The author practised at Downpatrick.
Observations on Some of the Diseases of the Parts of the Human Body, chiefly taken from the Dissections of Morbid Bodies. By Samuel Clossy, M.D. Dublin. 1763. 8vo. Pp.195. Glossy was invited by Dr. Steevcns to study morbid anatomy in the hospital which the latter had established in Dublin. In this work the results of his observations from 1752 to 1756 are given,
36
WARD'S PRESCRIPTIONS. — DAVID MACBRIDE.
as are also those of some further observations which he made in London, where he chiefly resided. He graduated in Arts in Dublin in 1744, and in Medicine in 1751. In 1756 he became a Licentiate of the College of Physicians, of which in 1761 he was elected a Fellow. He went to New York, where he was appointed Professor of Anatomy in King's College. He spent the last few years of his life in London, where he died about 1786.
Receipts for Preparing, &c, the Prescriptions and Principal Medicines of the late Mr. Ward. Dublin : G. and A. Ewing. 1763. 8vo. Pp. 46. (A reprint.)
Primitive Physick, &c. By John Wesley. Dublin. 1763. 8vo. (A reprint.)
David Macbride, the son of a Presbyterian clergyman, was born in Ballymoney, county of Antrim, on the 26th April, 1727. He served his apprenticeship to a local surgeon, and subsequently acted for some years as surgeon in the Royal Navy. Having completed his studies in Edinburgh and London, he settled in Dublin, where he attained to a large and lucrative practice. He died in Cavendish-row on the 28th December, 1778. Macbride was a man of great ability and versatility — an able physician, a skilful surgeon, and an expert obstetrician. As a chemical investigator he occupies a respectable position in the annals of that science. He was a teacher, too, and his lectures in his house in Jervis- street were well attended. They were delivered at 10 o'clock a.m., and the fee for a course was three guineas. He was one of the first surgeons appointed to the Meath Hospital, which at that time was situated on the site of the present Coombe Maternity.
Macbride's first work was published in London in 1764, under the title of " Experimental Essays. By David Macbride, Surgeon." They treat of fixed air (carbonic acid), of fermentation, of manures, of the scurvy and a new method of curing it, and of quicklime. The book comprises 267 pages, and is replete with original obser- vations, some of permanent value. A second and enlarged edition (230 pages) of this work was brought out in Dublin, in 1767, by Thomas Ewing, Dame-street. It was translated into French, .German, and Italian. In 1772 he published, in London, "A
MACBRIDE, CANT WELL, AND SMELLIE's WORKS. 37
Methodical Introduction to the Theory and Practise of Physic." 8vo. Pp. 660. An enlarged and corrected edition of this work was published in Dublin in 1777. 2 vols. Pp. 400 and 499. A Latin translation, by Clossius, appeared soon after in Utrecht. In 1767 there was published in Dublin his " Historical Account of a New Method of Treating the Scurvy at Sea." Pp. 38. In 1776 there appeared in London his " Account of Two Extraordinary Cases after Delivery."
Macbride to some extent adopted Robinson's views as to the dynamical origin of disease, as he considered it to arise from an abnormal state of the motions of the nervous or muscular systems, but he admitted that there was a distinction between the vital and inanimate forces. He insisted that disease cannot be rationally treated without a knowledge of its proximate cause. He advocated the analytic method of investigating the causes of morbid pheno- mena— a method which subsequently produced rich fruits in the domain of pathological anatomy. Most of Macbride's opinions have not stood the test of time ; but, with all its shortcomings, his work on medicine must be regarded as a meritorious and original contribution to the science, equalling in many respects the great work of his contemporary, Cullen. Gilborne says of him :—
" A celebrated writer is Macbride ; Great hia merit, moderate his Pride ; Cures all Diseases that Mankind befal, Relieves the Fair by Rules obstetrical : Prescriptions elegant his sense declare, The Sick retrieved by his auspicious care."
In 1764 Andrew Cantwell, M.D., died at Paris. He was born, in the beginning of the century, in the county of Tipperary, and graduated at Montpelier. He wrote several medical works, but none of them were published in Ireland.
In 1764-5 the third edition of Dr. William Smellie's works on Midwifery, in three volumes, was reproduced in Dublin by T. and J. Whitehouse, Parliament-street. In 1878 Dr. M'Clintock, of Dublin, edited, on behalf of the Sydenham Society, an edition of Smellie's work.
Andrews' Diseases of the Army was reprinted in Dublin in 1766.
38 SAMSON, BERDMORE, FOSTER, AND MAGENINE's WORKS.
W. Samson's work on Eational Medicine was reprinted in 17(36 by J. Exshaw and Thomas Ewing.
A Treatise on Diseases and Deformities of the Teeth and Gums. By Surgeon Thomas Berdmore. Dublin. 1767.
An Essay on Hospitals ; or, Succinct Directions for the Situation, Construction, and Administration of Hospitals. By Edward Foster, M.D. Dublin : W. C. Jones, Suffolk-street. 1768. 8vo. Pp. 72. Considering that this book was written long before the importance of what is now known as sanitary science was recognised, it is a meritorious production. The illustrations in it are artistically executed. He states that the study of anatomy was becoming more general in Ireland owing chiefly to Cleghorn's teachings.
Foster also wrote the following : —
An Appendix to an Essay on Hospitals. Dublin : W. C. Jones. 1768. 8vo. Pp. 39, The author is indignant that the newly- established county infirmaries are provided only with surgeons, as he considers that the great majority of cases treated in them are purely medical.
The Skeleton or Syllabus of a Course of Lectures on the Theory and Practice of Midwifery, &c. Dublin. 12mo. Pp. 20.
He wrote a work on Midwifery which, after his death, was edited by James Sims, and published in 1781 in London. It is an octavo volume of 316 pages, and was well received by obstetrical practitioners.
Foster was a graduate of Edinburgh University, and practised in Dublin, latterly in midwifery.
Gilborne's Ode shows that he was a teacher as well as a prac- titioner : —
" Judicious Foster feels the latent Pulse, To hidden Maladies gives quick Repulse, In Parturition brings propitious Aid — Each Dame retrieves that has by him been laid. He teaches Pupils, either Sex, apart, In learned lectures his mysterious Art."
The Doctrine of Inflammation, by Daniel Magenine, M.D., was published in 1768 simultaneously in London, Edinburgh, and (by G. Faulkner) Dublin. 8vo. Pp. 168.
WORKS BY TISSOT, JEBB, CADOGAN, LETTSON, ETC. 39
Advice to People in General with respect to their Health. Translated from the French of S. A. Tissot, M.D. Dublin. 1769. 2 vols. 8vo. 5th edition. Tissot's Essay on Health was reprinted in Dublin in 1766 and 1773.
A Physiological Enquiry into the Process of Labour, and an Attempt to Ascertain the Determining Cause of it. By Frederick Jebb, M.D. Dublin: Richard Moncrieffe, Capel-street. 1770. 8vo. Pp. 60. Dr. M'Clintock, in his sketch of the Rise of the Dublin School of Midwifery {Dublin Journal of Medical Science, February, 1858), states that this book was published anonymously, but that it was generally attributed to Frederick Jebb. Imme- diately after the publication of the book to which M'Clintock refers another edition must have been issued, for I have a copy with Jebb's name upon the title page. Except that it contains a refutation of the old notion that the efforts of the child contribute to its evolu- tion from the uterus, there is little original matter in this book. Jebb was educated chiefly in Paris, enjoyed a good practice in Dublin, and in 1773 became Master of the Rotunda Hospital.
A Dissertation on the Gout, &c. By William Codogan, M.D. Dublin: J. Sheppard, Anne-street. 1771. 8vo. Pp. 102. (A reprint.)
The Natural History of the Tea-Tree. With Observations on the Medical Qualities of Tea, &c. By John Coakley Lettson, M.D. Dublin : J. Williams, T. Walker, and C. Jenkins. 1772. 8vo. Pp. 82. The author states that tea-drinking has become a universal practice. He gives the results of some experiments, showing that tea is an antiseptic.
Dr. William Cullen's Lectures on Materia Medica were reprinted in Dublin in 1773.
A Translation from the French of Tissot's work on Smallpox was printed by James Williams, Skinners-row, Dublin, in 1773.
The treatise of Baron Dimsdale, M.D., " On the Present Method of Inoculating the Smallpox," was reprinted in Dublin in 1774.
In 1774 Buchan's " Domestic Medicine " was reprinted in Dublin, and again in 1792.
40
GILBORNE's POEM. — FLEURY.
In 1775 John Gilborne, a physician residing in Vicar-street, off Thomas-street, published his " Medical Review : a Poem ; being a Panegyric on the Faculty of Dublin — Physicians, Surgeons, and Apothecaries, marching in procession to the Temple of Fame." By John Gilborne, M.D., Dublin. J. A. Husband, printer. 12mo. Pp. 65. Dr. Aquilla Smith has pointed out that Sproull, of Strabane, is praised by Gilborne for interposing cambric or lawn between cantharides blister and the skin : Dr. William Stokes has given credit to Bretonneau for this expedient. Gilborne's book is very scarce ; a copy is contained in the Halliday Collection, Royal Irish Academy's library.
Advice to the People on the Epidemic (Catarrhal Fever) of October, November, and December, 1775. By a Physician. Printed by Charles Jenkin, Dame-street. 1775. 8vo. Pp. 48. The author of this brochure was Dr. Fleury, who enjoyed a good practice in the second half of the last century. He was bom at Portarlington in 1733, and was the grandson of the Rev. Mr. Fleury (a Huguenot), private chaplain to King William III., whom he accompanied to Ireland. T. C. Fleury graduated in Edinburgh in 1760, and soon afterwards settled in Dublin as a physician and man-midwife. He was the first systematic lecturer on midwifery in Dublin. He died in South Great George's-street on the 29th September, 1797. An essay on the Epidemic Cold of 1775, read by Fleury before the Medico-Philosophical Society, was considered by the late Sir William Wilde worthy of publica- tion in the fifth volume of the Dublin Journal of Medical Science.
In 1776 Alexander Monro's work on the Bones, Nerves, and the Lacteal Sac and Duct, was reprinted in a duodecimo volume in Dublin.
Observations on Wounds of the Head, &c. Dublin. 1776. 8vo. Pp. 177. This work was published anonymously. The author was William Dease, who became President of the Royal College of Surgeons, and to whom reference will be made further on. Dease published the following works : —
Observations on Wounds of the Head, with a particular inquiry into the parts principally affected in those who die in consequence
w. dease's works.
41
of sucli injuries. Second edition, with considerable additions, to which are added some general observations on the operation of bronchotomy. By William Dease, Surgeon to the United Hospitals of St. Nicholas and St. Catherine. Dublin : Printed by James Williams. 1778. 8vo. Pp.302.
Observations on the Different Methods made use of for the Radical Cure of Hydrocele, or Watery Rupture, and on other Diseases of the Testicle, to which is added a comparative view of the different methods for cutting for the stone, with some remarks on the medicines generally exhibited as solvents of the stone. By William Dease, Surgeon to the United Hospitals of St. Nicholas and St. Catherine. Dublin: Printed by J. Williams. 1782. 8vo. Pp. 149.
Observations on Midwifery, &c. By William Dease, Surgeon to the United Hospitals of St. Nicholas and St. Catherine. Dublin : Printed for J. Williams, L. White, &c. 1783. 8vo. Pp. 212. The late Dr. M'Clintock expressed a high opinion of the merits of this work.
Observations on the Different Methods made use of for the Radical Cure of Hydrocele. By William Dease, &c. Dublin : J. Williams, 21 Skinners-alley. 1787. 8vo. Pp. 150.
Observations on the Different Methods of treating the Venereal Diseases. Dublin: Printed by J. Williams. 1789. 8vo. Pp. 131.
Practical Remarks on Wounds of the Head. Dublin. 1790. 8vo.- Pp. 15. Dease did not put his name on this brochure ; nor on Remarks on Medical Jurisprudence, intended for the general information of juries and young surgeons. Dublin. 8vo. Pp. 32. (No date.)
In 1750 Mr. George Daunt, Surgeon to Mercer's Hospital, invented a lithotome and conductor, which were intended to lessen the risk of cutting into parts which should not be interfered with in the operation of lithotomy. The instruments were used as follows : — The patient being placed upon the table, the staff is introduced and held by an assistant ; the operator then makes an incision with slight obliquity downwards, to avoid injuring the
42
DAUNT'S L1TH0T0ME.
erector penis and a branch of the hypogastric artery. The mem- branous part of the urethra being opened, the operator passes the conductor along the groove of the staff into the bladder, and the staff is then withdrawn. The operator now takes the conductor in his left hand, and introduces his two forefingers into the handle (A), and places his thumb over the bow of the instrument (B). By the pronation of the wrist the operator lateralises the conductor and runs the lithotome upon its crest. Having arrived at the extremity of the conductor, the operator withdraws the knife along the crest, and then introduces the forceps on the conductor, and the latter being withdrawn, the extraction of the stone is proceeded with.
Daunt submitted his instruments to the Royal Academy of Surgery of Paris, and received the following letters from M. M or and : —
" Paeis, the Uth of February, 1754.
" Sir,
" I have received, with great pleasure, and return you thauks for, the account and instruments, which you have sent me, for the improvement of the lateral method. I have given up to the Academy of Sciences what regards the account of your success, in order to be inserted in their transactions, as they are entitled to publish those of the lateral method. I have shewn your instru- ments to the Academy of Surgery, and I have been named one of the committee, with two others of our gentlemen, to make trials of them on the dead subject. I shall, with great pleasure, acquaint you of the judgment that will be passed on them. I have also shewn them your uniting bandage for the hair lip, and it has been much approved of. I am enjoined, on their behalf, to tell you, they will very readily receive all you will communicate to them of your observations. For me, Sir, I pray you to be thoroughly con- vinced of the perfect consideration with which —
" I am, your most humble, and most obedient Servant,
" MORAND."
opinion of french surgeons on daunt's lithotome. 43 " Sir,
" There have been several trials made with the instruments you have transmitted to the Academy for the lateral operation : The Academy has been satisfied with them : They cut the prostate and the neck of the bladder very well: Mr. Le Dran's history, the cutting edge of which is on the convexity of the half crescent it represents, produces the same effect. As most lithotomists have it in view to cut those parts, many of them have devised different instruments to effect it, and they have been presented to the Academy ; but the particular form you have given the male con- ductor, is more sure and commodious, on account of the bow on the handle, which, according to your manner, might well be adapted to the gorgeret usually employed in this operation. The second instrument, which is both a female conductor and lithotome, is invariably introduced into the bladder, by means of the curve teeth at its extremity, and cuts laterally the neck of the bladder and prostate.
" The committee, who have made the trials of this lithotome, have thought it more expedient that the cutting blade should be made on the model of Mr. Cheselden's; that is to say, that it should be a little broader, and convex, towards the point, for the purpose of cutting the prostate more exactly, and narrower towards its base, where this breadth is useless, as the parts have been cut in the incision of the teguments.
" I have the honour to be most perfectly, Sir, " Your most humble, and most obedient Servant,
" Andouille" . " Commissary of the Academy for Correspondencies.
" Mr. Daunt."
" Such, Sir, is the decision of the Academy on the instruments for cutting for the stone, which Mr. Blondel presented to me on your behalf. The little uniting bandage has been shewn at a meeting, and has been greatly approved of. We shall receive your
44
KENNEDY ON AUCHNACLOY SPA. — REPRINTS.
remarks with the highest pleasure, and I should readily undertake to display their merit, were it necessary.
" I am, with perfect esteem, Sir,
" Your most humble, and most obedient Servant,
" MORAND.
"February 27, 1755."
W. Dease made some improvement on Daunt's instruments. He increased the size of the blade of the lithotome, and made it more narrow at the base and more convex. He gave a greater curve to the staff, and improved the form of the conductor. In the plate the shape of Daunt's and Dease's instruments is given, their actual size being reduced by one-half. Fig. 1, Daunt's conductor. Fig. 2, Daunt's lithotome. Fig. 3, Dease's staff. Fig. 4, Dease's conductor. Fig. 5, Dease's lithotome. Fig. 6, Dease's knife.
An Experimental Enquiry into the Chemical and Medicinal Properties of the Sulphurous Water at Auchnacloy. By Henry Macneale Kennedy, M.D. Monaghan. 1777. 12mo. Pp. 70. Kennedy studied abroad, and graduated at Leyden.
A Methodical Introduction to the Study of the Theory and Practise of Medicine (Anon). Dublin. 1777. 2 vols. 8vo.
The Management of Children, &c. By W. Codogan, M.D. Dublin : J. Sheppard, Anne-street. 1777. 8vo. Pp. 60. (A reprint.)
Dr. Codogan's Dissertation on Gout. By John Kerkenhout, M.D. Dublin: J. A. Husband. 1777. 8vo. Pp. 56. (A reprint.)
The celebrated Surgeon Percival Potts' sui'gical writings were collected and surreptitiously published, in two volumes, in 1778. They were illustrated with plates. A second edition, in three volumes, appeared in the following year in London.
A Treatise on the Effects of Lead. Translated from French of Mr. Goulard, Surgeon-Major, Royal and Military Hospitals, Montpellier. Dublin: R. Moncrieffe, Capel-street. 1778. 12mo.
HUSSEY, MORPIE, AND HARRIS'S WORKS.— REPRINTS. 45
Pp. 231. About this time Mr. Vispre, of 35 Great George's- street, advertised that he sold Goulard's lotion, prepared by Goulard himself.
The London Practise of Physic. 4th ed. Dublin : James Williams. 1779. 8vo. Pp.440.
A Physical Enquiry into the Cause and Cure of Fevers. By Garrett Hussey, M.D. Dublin. 1779. 8vo. Pp. 275. It was reprinted in London in 1784. Hussey was physician to Inns-quay Hospital, which was subsequently removed to J ervis-street.
A Safe and Easy Remedy for the Relief of the Stone and Gravel. By Nathaniel Hulme, M.D. Dublin : Printed by R. Marchbank* for L. Flinn, Castle-street. Dublin. 1780. 8vo. Pp. 169. (A reprint.)
Advice to People in General ; or, a Treatise on Ruptures. By P. T. Morpie, of Johnson' s-court, Fishambles-street, and sold by Mr. Perrin, 3 Castle-street, Dublin. 1783. This treatise con- tains a description of a new truss invented by the author and approved of by Surgeon Pott, to whom the treatise is dedicated.
Collectanea Hibernia Meilica. By Richard Harris, M.D. (Clonmel). Dublin : J. Exshaw. 1783. 8vo. Pp. 113. This work, which is written in a somewhat didactic style, contains articles on the pathology of general diseases, malformations, &c.
Animadversions on the Treatment of a late Medical Case. Dublin : " Printed in the year 1785." 8vo. Pp. 23.
Medical Commentaries on Fixed Air. By Matthew Dobson, M.D. ; with an Appendix by William Falconer, M.D. Dublin : W. Gilbert. 1785. 2nd ed. 8vo. Pp. 230. In this treatise the use of the solution of alkaline salts charged with fixed air (carbonic acid) is recommended as a cure for the stone. The book is a reprint.
In 1786 Dr. Edmond Cullen, Professor of Materia Medica, T.C.D., translated Baron Bergman's celebrated Physical and Chemical Essays. They contain an account of many medicinal waters. They were in 2 large volumes, and were published by Luke White.
* His printing office is still worked in Stafford-street, and under the same name.-
46 WORKS BY FLETCHER, ROCHE, RYAN, AND QUIN.
In 1785 a work on Medical Electricity by Sieur Palmer, M.D., was reprinted in Dublin.
A Book on Coughs, &c. By Thomas Hydes, Member of the Corporation of Surgeons, London. Dublin : Luke White, Dame- street. 1786. 8vo. Pp. 152. (A reprint.)
An Essay on Cold Bathing, &c. By a Physician. Dublin : P. Byrne, Grafton-street. 1786. 8vo. Pp. 73.
A Maritime State Considered as to the Health of Seamen. By Charles Fletcher, M.D. Dublin: Printed for the author by M. Mills, 36 Dorset-street. 1786. 8vo. Pp.342. This book describes the insanitary state of war ships, and treats upon many points in naval hygiene. It is interesting on account of the narratives of voyages which the author gives; during one of them Sterne's " Eliza " was a passenger.
A Chirurgical Dissertation. By Jordan Roche, L.R. C.S.I. Dublin. 1787. 8vo. Pp. 93. The author was the second person examined for the licence of the College. He practised in the neighbourhood of Drogheda.
An Enquiry into the Nature, Causes, and Cure of Consumption of the Lungs, &c. By Michael Ryan. Dublin. 1787. 8vo. Pp. 227. The author practised in Kilkenny. He published in London, in 1793, a little treatise on Asthma.
An Essay on the Nature and Care of the Epidemic Putrid Fever of the Years 1787 and 1788. By Thomas Heney, M.D. Mullingar : Printed by William Kidd. 1788. 8vo.
An anonymous pamphlet on the Swanlinbar Waters was pub- lished in Dublin in 1789 ; it contained 79 pages.
A Treatise on the Materia Medica. By William Cullen, M.D. Dublin : Luke White, Dame-street. 2 vols. 1789. A reprint.
A Treatise on Dropsy of the Brain, &c. By Charles William Quin, M.D. Dublin : William Jones, 86 Dame-street. 1790. 8vo. Pp. 227. Quin was Physician-General to the Forces. On the 5th May, 1783, he was admitted as a Licentiate and a Fellow of the College of Physicians. He graduated in 1777 in Arts in Dublin University, but obtained his medical degree elsewhere. Observations on Puerperal Fever. By Joseph Clarke, M.D.
JOSEril claeke's BOOK. — TIIOMAS WRIGHT.
47
Dublin. 1790. Clarke was Master of the Lying-in Hospital, and his observations refer to the fever as observed by him in that institution. He published several papers in the Transactions of the R. I. A., 1780-88.
A Concise History of the Human Muscles. By Thomas Wright, L.E.C.S. Dublin: J. Williams, 26 Great George's-street. 1791. 8vo. Pp. 224. Wright was one of the superintendents of dissec- tions in the School of the Royal College of Surgeons. He dedicated this book to William Dease, whom he styles the founder of the Irish School of Surgery. He published in 1811 a valuable account of the Walcheren fever. Wright was the second son of Thomas Wright, of Grenan House, County of Kilkenny, and his wife, Eleanor, daughter of Dr. Thomas Bell, of Athlone, Surgeon to Queen Anne. Sir Thomas Bell, Physician, of Dublin, and Surgeon Robert Bell, of Cork, were uncles to Mrs. Wright. He was born about 1758, and, under his uncle, Sir Thomas Bell, became a surgeon, and for some time was a teacher in the College School. He entered the army, was attached to the 60th Regiment, and saved the life of Lord Cornwallis in the American Revolu- tionary War. Whilst practising at 7 Great Ship-street, and still holding his commission, he joined the United Irishmen, and was imprisoned in the Castle, but his friend, Lord Cornwallis, the Viceroy, did not permit him to be long detained there. He served afterwards in India under the East Indian Company, and acted as physician to the Forces in the unfortunate Walcheren campaign. In the British Museum there is a letter addressed by him to Parliament on the cruelty of sending the Walcheren invalids to the East Coast, instead of to some healthier part. He was attacked himself with malarial fever, and died at Blenheim — whither he had gone to recruit his health — in 1812. Wright had dissecting rooms in Ship-street, and afterwards in Longford-street, in which he taught anatomy to a large class. His son, Surgeon Thomas Wright, of Ship-street, was for many years an influential member of the College of Surgeons. He was the founder of the Mendicity Institution. Another son, the Rev. George Newenham Wright, was an eminent and voluminous writer. T. Wright's maternal
48 AECHER, DICKSON, MOORE, AND WOOD'S WORKS.
uncle, Sir Thomas Bell, M.D., of Dublin, is the author of the History of a Case of Two Foetuses retained for 20 months, being successfully extracted from the abdomen by excision (an account of this case is contained in the library of the British Museum). Another of Sir T. Bell's sisters was married to Mr. Hawkes, of Briarfield, County of Roscommon, grandfather of Surgeon Charles Hawkes Todd, so often referred to in this History.
A Conspectus of a Course of Lectures on the Natural History, &c, of Various Medicines used in the Practise of Surgery. By Clement Archer. Dublin. 1791. 8vo. Pp. 68. Archer was Professor of Surgical Pharmacy, R.C.S.I., and from this book it is to be inferred that he delivered 71 lectures annually. He pub- lished, in 1791, a lecture introductory to his clinical course (8vo. 36 pages).
A Sketch of a Course of Lectures on Medical Philosophy. By Stephen Dickson, M.D. Dublin. 1792. Dickson was Professor of Practice of Medicine in the University School of Physic from 1792 to 1798, and was for several years "Register" of the College of Physicians. He was deprived of his Fellowship for non- attendance during two years at college meetings. He published, in the Transactions of the R. I. A. for 1787, " Observations on Pemphigus," and in 1795 a letter relative to the School of Physic (Dublin. 8vo. Pp. 94). His essay of 294 pages on Chemical Nomenclature (including observations on the same subject by Richard Kirwan) appeared in London in 1796.
On the Cause and Cure of a Species of Uterine Haemorrhage. By Joseph Moore, M.D. Dublin. 1792. 8vo. Pp. 48.
A Treatise on Typhus Fever. By James Wood, M.D. Dublin. 1793. 8vo.
Samuel Crumpe, M.D., born in Limerick in 1766, published in London, in 1793, a work of 304 pages on Opium. He died in 1796.
In 1793 Whitley Stokes published in Dublin, and in the Latin language, his Thesis for the Degree of M.D. in the University. The subject was Respiration. 8vo. Pp. 43.
Thoughts on the Abuses in the Present State of Physic,
WORKS OF TUOMY, DARWIN, WADE, PATTERSON, ETC. 49
Surgery, and Pharmacy. By Philanthropos. Dublin. 1793. 18mo. Pp. 32.
A Compendium of Nosology and Therapeutics, for the Use of the Students in Medicine and Surgery in the Irish Colleges. By William Gilbert. Dublin. 1794. 12mo. Pp. 120.
Disputatio Inaguralis de Ictero. Dublin. 1794. 8vo. Pp.21. (Dr. Martin Tuomy's Inaugural Thesis for the Degree of M.D.)
Erasmus Darwin's (M.D.) Zoonomia; or, Laws of Organic Life, in two quarto volumes, was published in 1794 in both Dublin and London.
Catalogus Systematicus Plantarum Indiginarum in. Comitatu Dubliniensis Inventarum. Dublin. 1794. In this work Dr. Walter Wade, Lecturer on Botany to the Royal Dublin Society and the R.C.S.I., gives a list of the plants growing in the County of Dublin. This work, and his Plantes Rariores, gave a great impetus to the study of botany in Ireland.
An Accouut of the Malignant Fever lately prevalent in Phila- delphia. Dublin : J. M. Bates, 89 Coombe. 1794. 8vo. Pp.60. (A reprint.)
Internal Dropsy of the Brain. By William Patterson, M.D. (Londonderry). Dublin : W. Gilbert, at the Medical Library, 26 South Great George's-street. 1794. 8vo. Pp. 93.
Observations on the Necessity of Regulating the Medical Pro- fession. By Edward Geoghegan, Surgeon. Dublin. 1 795. 8vo. Pp. 36. Geoghegan was an active member of the College of Surgeons.
Hermippus Redivivus, &c. Robert Bell, Dame-street. No date. 131 pages.
Directions for Warm and Cold Sea Bathing. With Observations on their Application in Different Diseases. By Thomas Reid, M.D. Dublin : Printed by II. Fitzpatrick, 2 Upper Ormond-quay. 1795. 8vo. Pp. 46. (Evidently a reprint.)
In 1798 Dr. Robert Blake, a Dublin dentist, published in Edin- burgh a thesis for the degree of M.D. in the University of that city. His subject was the Structure of Teeth. His thesis was, of course, in Latin, but he subsequently produced it in an enlarged
E
50
blake's essay on the teeth.
form, arid in English, under the following title : — " An Essay on the Structure and Formation of the Teeth in Man and various Animals." Dublin : Printed by William Porter. 1801. 8vo. Pp. 244. The work is illustrated by ten large sheets of copper- plate engravings. The great merit of Blake's work has been acknowledged by writers of eminence. The following extract is taken from Nasmyth's valuable treatise, entitled " Researches on the Development, Structure, and Diseases of the Teeth," published by Churchill, London, in 1839 : — " The Essay of Dr. Blake must always be regarded as the best work on the subject of the period at which it was written, and will keep its place as a standard pro- duction. He is one of the few authors who have taken the trouble to read their lesson from nature, and the deductions which he has drawn from his observations are practically useful. His ideas respecting the ' crusta petrosa ' were original at the time, and have since been generally acquiesced in ; but his views on most of the functions of the dental capsule are similar to those entertained by other writers, and very different from the opinions which I shall have an opportunity of stating in the course of the present work. His remarks on the succession of the teeth of fishes are very accurate."
Blake was for many years Secretary to the Physico-Medical Societv, which will in due time be described. He had a laro-e dental practice.
I learn from catalogues of books sold by auction and from book- sellers' lists that the following works were published or reprinted in Ireland during the eighteenth century, but I have not been able to discover them in the libraries : — Becket's Chirurgical Tracts ; Dossie's Theory and Practise of Chirurgical Pharmacy; Douglas on the Muscles, limes'* Description of the Human Muscles ; Bellost on Mercury ; Lawrence's Prelectiones Medicce ; Lewis' f Experi- mental History of the Materia Medica. 2 vols. Morgan's $ Praei ise
* Innes was an Edinburgh author. His work on the Muscles was edited in 1788 by Alexander Munro.
f Lewis was the author of several anatomical works published in Edinburgh towards the end of the last century.
X Probably a reprint of Morgan's Mechanical Practice of Physick. London. } 735.
PROBABLE REPRINTS OF BRITISH BOOKS.
51
of Physic ; Theobald's Dispensatory ; Warner on the Gout ; Culpepper's "Knglish Physician; Lewis' New Dispensatory ; Brooke's Practise of Medicine* 1750. 2 vols. They were all probably either reprints or nominally published in Dublin.
In Ferrar's History of Limerick it is mentioned that Surgeon Charles Dufont, who died in Limerick in 1750, wrote a Treatise on Surgery, and that John Martin, M.D., who died in 1786, described the Castleconnell Spa. I cannot find Dufont's book in the libraries or catalogues.
* Evidently Dr. Richard Brooke's Practice of Physic, a popular work, published in London, and which attained to the honour of a fifth edition in 1768.
CHAPTER III.
THE BARBER-SURGEONS.
The etymology of the word " surgery," or " cliirurgery" {Xelp, the hand, and epyov^ an organ), shows that it is essentially a handi- craft— i.e., work with the hand. From the earliest period in the history of the healing art the practice of medicine was distin- guished from remedial treatment, which consisted in the dressing of wounds, the application of bandages, and other mechanical interferences. Nevertheless, there is little doubt but that surgery and medicine were usually in early ages practised by the same individual. The " Father of Medicine," Hippocrates, was a surgeon as well as a physician. He set fractures and reduced dislocations, and he was acquainted with the midwifery forceps. He described the use of the actual cautery.
Although in ancient times the physician, as a rule, practised surgery, yet there were some practitioners of the healing art who confined their practice to the treatment of wounds and sores : they were regarded as distinct from the physician. Herophilus and Erasistratus flourished as surgeons in Alexandria 300 years before the birth of Christ. It is stated that a Grseco-Egyptian surgeon named Ammianus invented an instrument for crushing the stone in the bladder, thereby anticipating by two thousand years Civiale's invention of lithotrity. In Celsus' time surgery was practised in Rome by persons who confined themselves exclusively to it. In the Middle Ages the " leech " usually practised both medicine and surgery.
It is alleged that Charlemagne established medical seminaries at Metz, Lyons, and Fulda, by a degree issued in 805. The first institution which conferred distinct diplomas in the various branches of the curative art was the once famous University of Salerno,
ANCIENT SCHOOLS OF MEDICINE — CLERICAL SURGEONS. 53
situated 32 miles from Naples. It was founded towards the end of the eleventh century by Duke Robert Guiscard, a Norman. Its medical seminary (Schola Salernitano) was the most celebrated seat of medical lore in Christendom — its alumni came from most parts of Europe. Dr. Dollinger, in his learned work on Universities, states that the medical school at Salerno was the most ancient university.
After the conquest of Spain by the Moslems important schools of medicine were established in that country by the Arabians.
Bologna became a great medical school about the fourteenth century, and still occupies a respectable position as a seat of medical education. It is remarkable as the first medical school which admitted women as students and teachers. Madonna Manzo- lina was its Professor of anatomy and surgery for many years.
For several centuries the regular clergy generally officiated as physicians. It is probable that the power to confer medical degrees claimed by bishops down to our own time originated in the grant- ing by their ecclesiastical superiors of licences to priests to practise. By ancient usage the Archbishop of Canterbury has still the right to create Doctors of Medicine, though, of course, such a qualifi- cation would not enable the holder thereof to have his name* placed upon the Medical Register. The " Canterbury Degree " was, however, a registrable qualification at the time of the passing of the Medical Act of 1858.
When the priests were forbidden * to practise physic or surgery, especially the latter, which embrued their hands in blood, their servants began to practise as surgeons, for, having acted as assistants to the clergy, they had acquired some practical know- ledge of surgery. Many of them settled in the towns and styled themselves chirurgeons. In the thirteenth and fourteenth cen- turies, whilst clerics still, to some extent, practised physic, surgery was wholly abandoned to the laity. The regularly educated sur- geons resented the intrusion of the servants and lay brothers from the monastic establishments, who practised surgery on their own
* The Council of Tours forbid (in 1163) priests from leaving their cloisters to practise medicine.
54
FIRST INCORPORATION OF SURGEONS.
account. In Paris the " Procureur du Roy " proceeded against the unlicensed surgeons, at the instigation of those who possessed medical or surgical diplomas from the universities and the bishops, but notwithstanding much persecution the low grade surgeons held their ground. Some of them practised surgery exclusively, but the majority were surgeons, dentists, phlebotomists, and barbers. In addition to the surgical servants of the clerics, the ordinary barbers practised surgery. In process of time there came into existence three classes of surgeons : — 1. Those who had been regularly educated in the universities, and who held diplomas issued by those learned bodies ; 2. Surgeons who learned then* art by pupilage, and confined their practice to surgery; and, lastly, the barber-surgeons, irregularly educated, and practising "barbery," wig-making, &c.
The first incorporation of surgeons took place in 1268, when Louis IX. (commonly known as St. Louis) formed a college of surgeons in Paris, and dedicated it to St. Cosmos and St. Damian. This king was a great patron of surgeons, and might be regarded as one himself, for he often dressed the wounds of his soldiers. Examinations to test the competency of persons to practise were first instituted tinder the reign of Philip the Fair. The examining board consisted of persons who had acquired the diploma of master of surgery — a qualification which existed in France until the Revolution. A strict edict was issued by King John in 1352 against unlicensed practitioners. Charles V. was a great admirer of surgery, and enrolled himself, whilst regent of France, amongst the members of the college of surgeons. In short, surgery has always had a high position assigned to it in France. In that country there were, previous to the Revolution, about eighteen universities, and fifteen colleges or academies of physicians, all conferring degrees, most of which were as readily purchasable as the bogus degrees of some of the American so-called universities now are, or lately were. On the other hand, there were but few corporations of surgeons, and they were well conducted, influential, and numerous fraternities. One of the most noble buildings in Paris was the Academy of Surgery, which at the time of
TITE LONDON BARBER-SURGEONS.
55
the Revolution was converted into the Ecole de Sante, and the seat of the best medical instruction which France afforded. The Ecole de Sante subsequently became the Ecole de Medecine, which it still remains.
In England the first surgeon occupying an official position of whom we have any account was Richard de Wy. He was appointed surgeon to Edward III., and was probably the first of that long roll of royal officers termed Sergeant-Surgeons, carried clown to our own time. We learn from Rymer's " Fsedera" (Tome IX., p. 182) that in 1447 the office of barber at the gates of the king's palace was granted as a mark of royal favour to his " servants of the ewry," Robert Bolley and Alexander Donour. This post was one of great emolument. Every person who received the knighthood of the Bath was obliged to pay these barber-surgeons a fee for his tonsure. The amount was regulated by the rank of the knight-elect — a duke paid £10, a large sum in those times.
So far back as 1308 a company, or " crafte," of barbers prac- tising surgery existed in London. They enjoyed such municipal privileges as were possessed by other craftsmen. In 1461-2 this company was incorporated by a charter granted by King Edward IV., and following the example of the French Academy dedicated it to St. Cosmos and St. Damian.* The charter ordained that_ only competent persons should be admitted to tbe corporation, and that no one should practise without their authority in the city of London. The charter of the company was renewed in 1499 by Henry VII., and confirmed by Hemy VIII. in 1512. In this year the first Act of Parliament relating to the medical profession was passed (3rd Hemy VIII., c. 11). It points out the inconve- niences caused by ignorant persons, such as " smiths, women," &c, practising physic and surgery, and ordains that no one shall practise as a physician or surgeon unless he has been examined, approved of, and admitted by the Bishop of London or Dean of St. Paul's for the time being. The medico-ecclesiastical authority was, however, to be assisted by four doctors of physic or surgeons, as the case might be. Unlicensed persons were liable to a penalty of £5 * Brothers, physicians, who were martyred.
56 STATUTES RELATING TO THE LONDON SURGEONS.
per month whilst engaged in illegal practice. In every diocese outside of London the bishop thereof was constituted the licensing authority. The Act provided that surgeons " shall have an open sign on the street side, where they shall fortune to dwell, that all the king's liege people there passing by may know at all times whither to resort for their remedies in time of necessity." The sign insisted upon was probably meant to apply to the usual pole projected over the door of the barber-surgeon's shop. It was a symbol of the staff held in the patient's hands whilst being bled ; the white stripes on the pole represented the tape used by the operator, and the red colour on the pole symbolised the blood which the operator liberated from the veins of the usually not unwilling patient. Sometimes a basin pendant from the pole represented the vessel used to receive the patient's blood. The barbers still occasionally display the parti-coloured pole ; but clearly it has now no relevancy to their art.
The Act 5th Henry VIII., c. 6, exempted surgeons from serving as jurors or constables, or from bearing arms.
In 1541 there existed surgeons in London who were not mem- bers of the corporation. In that year the Act 32nd Henry VIII., c. 42, incorporated all the surgeons and barbers under the style of the " Masters or Governors of the Mystery and Commonalty of Barbers and Surgeons of London." No surgeon was to practise as a barber, and vice versa. The company were permitted to receive annually the bodies of four persons executed, for the purpose of dissection. The last clause in the Act provided that " it shall be lawfull for any of the King's subjects, not being a bai'ber or surgeon, to retain, have, and keep in his house as his servant any person being a barber or surgeon."
It would seem that the exclusive privileges conferred on the surgeons caused discontent, for an Act passed in 1544 permitted unlicensed persons to " minister outward medicines."
The statutes relating to the barber-surgeons were ratified by Philip and Mary and by Elizabeth.
In 1604 the surgeons received a charter conferring upon them the exclusive right to practise within three miles of London, and a
THE SCOTTISH SURGICAL CORPORATIONS.
57
court of twenty-four assistants was constituted. A charter of Charles I., dated in 1629, extended their jurisdiction to seven miles from London, and constituted a court of ten examiners out of twenty-four assistants.
The Act 18th George II. c. 15, passed in 1745, separated the surgeons from the barbers for ever. Henceforth the former formed a distinct company under the style of the Master, Governors, and Commonalty of the Art and Science of Surgery of London. In 1800 this company was dissolved, and the surgeons ceased to form a constituent of the London Municipal Companies ; they were reformed into a Royal College with additional powers.
The surgeons and barbers of Edinburgh were incorporated in 1505. It is remarkable that their charter enacts that the persons admitted should be acquainted with anatomy. Each year the company were entitled to receive for dissection the body of an executed criminal. In 1695 the surgeons were constituted the chirurgeons and chirurgeon-apothecaries of Edinburgh — there never was a corporation of apothecaries in Scotland. In 1778 the corporation were converted into a Eoyal College of Surgeons ; but with a curious constitution, which still left them in great part a municipal institution; until 1833 the president was a member of the town council. In 1851 the college were made in every sense a national and not a local institution. It is not generally known that the medical school of Edinburgh originated with the surgeons ; they established professorships, and became a teaching body.' Early in the last century they transferred their teaching faculty to the University, which is still somewhat of a municipal institution, being in part under the government of the town council. .
The Faculty of Physicians and Surgeons of Glasgow was incor- porated in 1599. Its charter was modified by Parliament in 1672. The Faculty had power to grant licences for the four shires of Lanark, Ayr, Renfrew, and Dunbai'ton. It long successfully contested the right of the graduates of Glasgow University to practise without its permission in these counties ; but in 1850, on obtaining ;i new charter, it relinquished its exclusive privileges.
58
RELATION OF THE PHYSICIANS TO SURGERY.
Its qualification has long been considered as purely surgical, and is only accepted as such by the Local Government Board.
The members of the London College of Physicians have always claimed the right to practise surgery if they chose so to do. The higher medical education which they received, as compared with the limited attainments of the barber-surgeons, qualified them to more efficiently perform the major operations in surgery. They had not that marked aversion to surgical practice in the seventeenth century that they seem to have had in the eighteenth. It is remarkable that the regular courses of lectures on anatomy and surgery, delivered in the seventeenth century before the Barber- Surgeons' Corporation in London, were, as enacted by a by-law, given by a Doctor of Physic — Harvey, the discoverer of the circulation of the blood, was Lecturer on Anatomy and Chirurgery to the College of Physicians. The members of the College of Physicians were sometimes brethren of the fraternity of barber- surgeons.
The author of a work entitled " A Treatise on all the Muscles of the Whole Body," printed by Richard Thrallan, London, in 1634, describes himself as follows: — "Alexander Read, Doctor of Physick, a Fellow of the Colledge of Physicians of the famous City of London, and a Brother of the Worshipful Company of Barber-C hirurgeons. ' '
A book, which in its time created a considerable amount of angry controversy, had the following title — " On the History of Academic and Scholastic Learning. By John Webster, Practi- tioner in Physic and Chirurgery. London. 1654."
The Edinburgh physicians were by no means averse to the practice of surgery, as is shown by their attempt in the seventeenth century to acquire by charter the right to practise as surgeons.
In 1656 a charter was prepared, with the sanction of Cromwell, establishing a college of physicians for Scotland, and empowering its members to practise surgery, " inasmuch as the science of physick doth comprehend, include, and containe in it the know- ledge of chirurgery, being a special part of the same and member thereof." The death of Cromwell probably prevented the issue of
physicians' college refuses to admit obstetricians. 59
the proposed charter, and that obtained from Charles II. contains no reference to surgery. The Edinburgh surgeons claim that they prevented the issue of the charter by the influence which they brought to bear upon the Protector through the Lord Provost of Edinburgh, Sir Andrew Eamsay. It is clear, then, that whilst the physicians were persecuting and even imprisoning the surgeons for practising physic, the physicians themselves were encroaching upon the domain of the pure surgeon, whilst the apothecary invaded the territories of both the physician and surgeon.
In the last century, and the early part of the present one, the physicians on the whole seem to have regarded any kind of manual treatment of the body as beneath the dignity of the profession of pure medicine. Their objection to admit obstetricians to their colleges was founded upon the fact that the work of the latter was chiefly mechanical : they considered that the obstetrician's proper place was amongst the surgeons. It seems strange that so late as the fourth decade of the present century eminent physicians should be so unenlightened as to regard midwifery practice as one which to a certain extent degraded a medical practitioner. When Sir Henry Halford, President of the London College of Physicians, was examined, in 1834, by the Select Committee of the House of Commons on Medical Education, he stated that it was not desir- able to repeal that by-law which excluded from admission to the Fellowship of his college persons engaged in the practice of midwifery. He said that it "would rather disparage the highest grade of the profession to let them engage in that particular branch, which is a manual operation very much." He further stated that it was necessary that the member of a college of surgeons should disfranchise himself before being admitted a licentiate of .the College of Physicians, in order to keep medical practice " as respectable as possible, and as distinct." In Ireland midwifery practitioners were admitted to the Fellowship of the College of Physicians long before the close of the last century.
It is probable that a large number of persons practised surgery early in the fifteenth century in Dublin, as it is unlikely that only a few individuals would have been incorporated. On the 18th
60 HENRY VI. INCORPORATED THE BARBER-SURGEONS.
October, 1446, King Henry VI. established by royal charter a Fraternity, or Guild of Barbers. This was the first incorporation of medical practitioners in the United Kingdom ; the next was that of the London Barber-Chirurgeons, in 1461. The Dublin fraternity were styled simply barbers, but I gather from the text of a charter granted to the fraternity by Queen Elizabeth that the word "barber" was the exact equivalent for "surgeon" in those clays. The charter of King Henry cannot be found. Perhaps it was surrendered — a practice not unusual on receiving a new charter. It is, however, somewhat fully recited in Queen Elizabeth's charter, granted in 1572. It enabled women to be admitted to the freedom of the guild — a proof that even in those early days women aspired to be disciples of Esculapius.
The charter granted by Queen Elizabeth is preserved in the Manuscript Room of Trinity College, Dublin. It is beautifully written and illuminated, and is worthy of exhibition in a glass-case in the rooms usually open to readers and visitors. The wording of the charter is in Latin, of which the following is a translation : —
" CHtjatotfft by the Grace of God of England France and Ireland Queen Defender of the Faith and soforth To all persons to whom these present Letters may come Greeting. Whereas our most dearly beloved progenitor Henry the Sixth late King of England by his Letters patent dated at Dublin the eighteenth day of October in the twenty-fifth year of his Reign of his special Grace with the Assent of the Reverend Father in Christ Richd. Arch- Bishop of Dublin then his Justice of his Land of Ireland for the praise of God and Honour of the Blessed Virgin Mary St. Mary Magdalene and all Saints thoroughly to fulfil the pious purpose and good Intention of his beloved and faithful Richard Arch- Bishop of Dublin Giles Thorndon Esquire his Treasurer of Ireland Brother Thos. Talbot Prior of Kilmainham Brother William Prior of the House of St. John without New Gate Dublin Christopher Barnewall his Chief Justice in his Land of Ireland Robert Dow- dall his Chief Justice of his Common Bench of Ireland Michl. Gryffen Chief Baron of his Exchequer aforesaid Edward Somerton his Sergeant at Law in his Land of Ireland Stephen Roche his Attorney Edward Brian James Cheny Barbers Philip Leghlen Barber John Browne Richard Russell Barbers Stephen Barby and
ELIZABETHS CHARTER TO DUBLIN BARBER-SURGEONS. 61
John Vale Barbers Granted unto them and gave Licence for him his Heirs and Successors as much as in him lay That they or the Survivors of them for the praise of God and Honour of the Blessed Virgin Mary and all Saints might begin anew found initiate establish enter upon and make a Fraternity or Guild of the Art of Barbers of his City of Dublin to be for ever called or named the Fraternity or Guild of Saint Mary Magdalene to consist of themselves and other persons as well Men as Women and to receive admit and accept of any other persons whatsoever fit and discreet and freely willing to join them as Brothers and Sisters of the Fraternity or Guild aforesaid.
" And that the Brothers of the Fraternity or Guild aforesaid so begun founded initiated and established might every year have one Master and two Wardens of themselves who shall be of the Art of Barbers for the Rule Governance and Oversight of such Fraternity or Guild and Custody of all Lands Tenements rents possessions Goods and Chattels which to the said Fraternity or Guild aforesaid were heretofore given granted or assigned or to the said Fraternity or Guild should thereafter happen to belong for the Rule and Governance of the Art of Barbers aforesaid in the City aforesaid and the suburbs thereof and that such Master and Wardens for the time being with the advice and consent of the more discreet Brethren of the Art aforesaid might have full power to elect ordain nominate and successively appoint other Master and Wardens from year to year for the rule Gover- nance and Superintendence of such Fraternity or Guild and Art aforesaid and Custody of all Lands and Tenements rents and pos- sessions Goods and Chattels aforesaid to be had in form aforesaid and them and each of them from time to time when it should be necessary and expedient from the offices aforesaid to exonerate and remove and others of the Art aforesaid in his place as it should be expedient to put and appoint and might have keep and use a common seal for the Affairs and Business to the said Fraternity or Guild belonging which Seal should remain under the Custody of the said Master and Wardens for the time being with all and singular other Gifts Grants Authority Customs Privileges Franchises and Immunities as in and by the aforesaid Letters patent bearing date the clay and year above mentioned and remaining of Record in the Rolls of our Chancery of our King- dom of Ireland may more fully appear. And We having maturely considered how useful and necessary it would be for
62 ELIZABETH'S CHARTER TO DUBLIN BARBER-SURGEONS.
preserving the Health of the Human Body that there were more persons skilled in the Art of Chirurgery within the City of Dublin aforesaid Sickness and Infirmities committing vast Havoc for the promotion and exercise of which Art the aforesaid Fraternity and Guild of Barbers was created and established by our aforesaid most beloved pregenitor Henry and because there are now two distinct Societies practising the said Art and Faculty in our City aforesaid (vizt.) one of Barbers and the other of Chirurgeons which said Society of Chirurgeons is not as yet constituted nor incorporated into any Body Politic and it being necessary to blend join and reduce the said distinct and separate Societies of Barbers and Chirurgeons into one Body that in one close aggregate and connected Fellowship the Art and Science of Chirurgery might flourish as well in Theory as in Practice and would greatly conduce to and be a means of perfectly learning and exercising the art aforesaid and assisting both themselves and their present and future apprentices of our more abundant Grace certain knowledge and mere motion with the assent of our dearly beloved and faith- ful Councillor Sir Henry Sydney Knt. of our most Noble Order of the Garter President of our Council of our Marches of Wales one of our Privy Council in our Kingdom of England and our Deputy General of our Kingdom of Ireland aforesaid and with the advice and consent of our Council of our said Kingdom Have given and granted as much as in us lies to our Beloved subjects William Kelly Richard Egerton Richard Luttrell Stephen Cradock Rowland Merry Walter Naghtyne John Birde Thomas Newman and Patrick Drynan Chirurgeons of our City of Dublin aforesaid. That they and all others admitted into the Liberties of either Fraternity or Society aforesaid according to the custom of our City aforesaid are hereby from henceforth united and in fact and in name made one entire Society Body and perpetual Community. And that the said Body Society and Community of Chirurgeons shall from henceforth be named and called the Fraternity or Guild of St. Mary Magdalene in Dublin and that by the same name they and their successors shall implead and be impleaded before all Judges and J ustices whatsoever in all Courts Actions Suits and Pleas whatsoever and that by the same Name they are persons fit and capable to acquire and possess in Fee and perpetuity Lands and Tenements rents services and other posses- sions whatsoever and that they may have a Common Seal for the service of the Business of the said Fraternity or Guild for ever.
Elizabeth's charter to Dublin barber-surgeons. 63
And Whereas the aforesaid Master and Wardens of the Frater- nity of Barbers of our City of Dublin aforesaid and the aforesaid Body Society and Community of Chirurgeons of our City afore- said Have humbly besought us That they and their Successors for the furtherance and advantage of the said several Arts should be from henceforth made one Body Corporate. Know ye that We of our more abundant Special Grace certain Knowledge and mere Motion with the Assent aforesaid Have given and granted and by these presents Do give and grant for us our heirs and succes- sors as much as in us is to the said Master or Wardens of the Fraternity of Barbers aforesaid and to their Successors that the aforesaid Body Society and Community of Chirurgeons aforesaid for ever after the date of these presents may be shall be and shall be named and called the Master Wardens and Fraternity of Barbers and Chirurgeons of the Guild of St. Mary Magdalene within our City of Dublin and do ordain create and found them for ever hereafter one Body Corporate in Fact Deed and Name of one Master two Wardens and Fraternity of Barbers and Chirur- geons of the Guild aforesaid and do constitute and establish them to continue for time perpetual and We do unite incorporate make constitute create declare ordain and appoint the said Master Wardens and Fraternity of Barbers aforesaid and the aforesaid Body Society and Community of Chirurgeons one Body Corporate and by these presents do declare them and their successors for ever hereafter to be united Incorporated and one Body made and established. And that they from henceforth for ever by the name of Master Wardens and Fraternity of Barbers and Chirurgeons of the Guild of St. Mary Magdalene within our City of Dublin aforesaid may plead and be Impleaded answer and be answered before any Justices and Ministers whatsoever of us our Heirs and Successors in all Courts and places whatsoever of or for all or any manner of actions real or personal mixed. And that they and their successors may have for ever one Common Seal to serve them For sealing their Acts Deeds and Business. And further of our more abundant special Grace certain knowledge and mere motion with flic assent aforesaid We have given granted and confirmed and by these presents for us our Heirs and Successors Do give grant and confirm as much as in us is to the aforesaid Master Wardens and Fraternity of Barbers and Chirurgeons of the Guild of St. Mary Magdalene within our City of Dublin aforesaid and to their Successors all and singular the Liberties
64 Elizabeth's charter to Dublin barber-surgeons.
Franchises Gifts Grants Authorities Customs privileges Immuni- ties and Prescriptions which our aforesaid most dearly beloved Predecessor Henry the Sixth to the aforesaid Master and Wardens of the Barbers by the name of the Fraternity or Guild of St. Mary Magdalene or by any other name "whatsoever heretofore hath given or granted. And that they and their Successors may and can use enjoy possess and exercise all and singular the aforesaid Liberties Franchises Gifts Grants Authorities Customs Privileges Immunities and Prescriptions and every of "them in as ample manner and form as the aforesaid Master and Wardens of the Barbers or by any other Name whatsoever by virtue of the Letters patent aforesaid heretofore used enjoyed or exercised or of right ought to use exercise or enjoy any omission abuse or non use thereof or any other cause matter or thing whatsoever in any wise notwithstanding. And further We have given and granted and by these Presents Do give and grant to the said Master Wardens and Fraternity of Barbers and Chirurgeons of the Guild of St. Mary Magdalene within our City of Dublin aforesaid that they and their Successors may peaceably jointly and indifferently Have hold and for ever possess all Lands Tenements Hereditaments and Possessions whatsoever which the aforesaid Fraternity or Guild of Barbers or by any other Name whatsoever heretofore held and possessed to the use of the said Master Wardens and Fraternity of Barbers and Chirurgeons aforesaid. And that they and their Successors may yearly and every year Nominate and Elect one Master and two wardens of themselves of the Arts aforesaid or either of them to the Rule Governance and oversight of the Guild aforesaid and the custody of all Lands rents posses- sions Goods and Chattels which to the said Fraternity or Guild aforesaid in manner aforesaid belong or hereafter shall be acquired given granted or assigned to them. We also grant to the said Master Wardens and Fraternity of Barbers and Chirurgeons aforesaid and their Successors that no person in the said City of Dublin nor in the Suburbs thereof or within the Franchises of the said City shall exercise any of the said Arts of Chirurgery or Barbers unless he shall be admitted so to do by the aforesaid Master and Wardens or their Successors for the time being and by the major part of the Brethren of said Guild by Letters of the said Master Wardens and Brethren sealed with the Common Seal of the said Guild under the penalty of Five pounds sterling for every month in which he is not admitted and shall exercise any of
Elizabeth's charter to Dublin barber-surgeons. 65
the Arts or Faculties aforesaid to be levied received and applied to the use of the said Guild. And this without fine or fee for the premises or sealing of these presents to be made paid or in any- wise rendered to us and without any Writ of ad quod Damnum or any other Writs or Inquisitions or Mandates to be thereupon had made or prosecuted. So that express Mention of the true yearly value or of the Certainty of the Premises or any of them or of any other Gifts or Grants by us or by any of our Ancestors to the said Fraternities of Barbers and Chirurgeons before this present day made and in these Presents not appearing to be made or any other Statute Act Ordinance Proclamation Law Usage Custom Restriction or Proviso or any other cause matter or thing whatso- ever in any wise notwithstanding. In Testimony whereof We have caused these our Letters to be made Patent. Witness our Deputy aforesaid at Dublin the Fourteenth day of September in the Nineteenth year of our Reign.
" Alford."
We learn from the text of Queen Elizabeth's charter that a Company of Surgeons had come into existence since the barbers were incorporated by Henry VI. There is no reference in the charter to the art practised by barbers being distinct in any way from that followed by the chirurgeon. The two communities were united for purely medical purposes, and we see that the original object in founding a Fraternity of Barbers was for " the promotion and exercise " of the art of chirurgery. The charter states expressly that the two companies — the incorporated barbers and the unincorporated chirurgeons — are to be consolidated into one body for the practise of surgery. It is clear, then, that in the age of Queen Elizabeth hair-cutting and dressing and shaving were not practised as a distinct " mystery " by the barbers.
The arms of the Barber-Surgeons Company were nearly an exact copy of those granted to the London Company. In 1642 Dr. William Roberts was appointed Ulster King-at-Arms. He made a grant of arms to the company in consideration of the ser- vices which they had rendered to the sovereign : —
" William Roberts Doctor of the Civill Lawe Vluester Kinge of Armes of the whole Kingdome of Ireland &c. To all and
66
GRANT OF ARMS.
singuler as well nobles Kinges of Armes Heralds and other Officers att Armes as Gentlemen and others to whome these present Letters Patents shall come sendeth greetinge &c. Whereas these Emblemes of honnour depicted in sheilds now commonly called Armes have formerly not only benne given to persons of iminence and estima- tion for services done their Soveraignes in Martiall or Civill imployments (whereby they and their posteritie have benne destin- guished from the meere servile and ignoble multitude and their descents and Genealogies preserved from confusion) but allso ever since the establishment of good and Civill Governement under Monarchic Citties townes and Corporations by ye favour of their Princes and meritt of their services have benne endowed with divers liberties and priviledges conduceing to the freedome and commoditie of the Cittizens by which enfranchisements for- reiglmers have been wholy debarred to intrude uppon their priviledges which said Citties and townes have had devised for them and confirmed unto them (by the authority of their Sove- raignes) Common Seales with some Emblemes engraven in Sheilds silently denoting their Services and deserts that they might use the same in matters touching their publique affaires, the better to prevent forgeries and deceipts each of which have in processe of time (and that not improperly) benne called the Armes of such Corporations in respect they doe and may lawfully advance the same depicted in Standards Banners Ensignes Penons Sheilds or any other Martiall habilaments or matters of tryumph or pub- lique shewTes tendeng to the honnour of said Citties or townes. And whereas (by farther services done by such Corporacons) perticuler professions therein have benne incorporated into destinct Companies yl (with ye more facility and convenience) they might manage their owne perticnler affaires and allso have had one common seale given them differing from y* of their Corporation of the citty or any other Company therein incorported or in any other Citties or townes. And whereas it as improper and incon- venient for a perticuler profession incorporated to use in their Common Seale the Armes of a company of another citty (although of the like profession) as for one Citty or towne to use the Armes of another in their Seales unlesse such Citty or towne doe use ye said Armes with some difference or marke of diminution to denote its subordination to such Citty or towne whose Armes they beare soe differenced, and to yeeld some acknolledgemente that their liberties and priviledges are dependant on others. Wherefore I
GRANT OF ARMS.
67
haveing taken it into my consideration how yl the Company of Barber Chyrurgeons of the Citty of Dublin (being made a Cor- poration by Kinge Henry the Sixth and endowed with many faire priviledges and liberties) haveing noe dependance on any other Citty yet notwithstanding they have for some space used in their Common Seale the Armes of the Company of Barber Chyrur- geons of ye Citty of London with some small difference being a note of diminution or subordination. In consideration of the premises and att the request of the Master and the rest of the said Company of Barber Chyrurgeons and in perpetuall memory of (not only ye ever constant loyalty of the said citty of Dublin and the many great and famous services by them done their Soveraignes the Kinges of England) but allso for the many speciall and memorable services done both in times of peace and warre by the said Company of Barber Chyrurgeons to their said Soveraignes in ancient times &c. allso of late to our now most gracious Soveraigne Lord King Charles in his late and present Armies in this Kingdome by the power and authority given mee by our most gratious Soveraigne Lord King Charles under the great Seale of Ireland I doe hereby give graunt ratefie and confirme unto the said Company of Barber Chyrurgeons forever not only as an embleme of their singuler abilities in matters concerning their professions but allso of their ancient loyallty and present fidelity and many good services clone his sacred Matie this Atcheivement depicted in the margent and blazoned as followeth viz' Parted by a crosse of England charged with a lyon passant gardant argent crowned Or these two coates armour quartered viz' the first Argent a cheveron gules betwixt three Cinquefoyles azure The second Coat Armour Azure a Harpe crowned Or The third as the second the fowerth as the first The Creast on a helme and wreath argent and gules St. Mary Magdalen &c Mantled gules doubled argent Supported by a Leopard proper and an Irish Greyhound argent each gorged with a Ducall Coronett and standing on a scrowle with their motto viz1 *i> Christi Salvs Nostra. W hich said Atcheivement by the power and authority aforesaid I doe hereby give and graunt the said Company togither incor- porate full power and authority henceforth being engraven in any mettall, to use as the publique Seale of their said Corporation and to cause the same to bee depicted engraven used or borne or advanced at any time or in any kind hereafter as hath benne accustomed by incorporate companies in any citty in his Ma"
i
68 GRANT OF ARMS.
dominions. I allso by the power and authority aforesaid doe hereby graunt that if any perticuler member of the said Corpora- tion who hath noe assurance or certaine knolledge of any Coat Armour borne by his Ancestours nor hath had Coate Armour graunted or confirmed unto him by a King of Armes shall desire to have his funeralls celebrated after the most decent manner befitting his quality hee may beire on his hearse and use otherwise at that time according to the ancient and moderne customes of the Cheif est Cittyes of England the Atcheivement of the said Corpora- tion, without supporters Creast or Motto and allso to all others who are Gentlemen of blood or Coat Armour to beare the same placed by their owne Armes on their heirses att their burialls or funeralls to denote their profession provided theire bee direction given for the decent ordering thereof by my selfe or successours myne or their Martiall Martialls Deputy or Deputies. In full and ample confirmation whereof I hereunto subscribe my name and title and affixe the Seale of my office togitber with the seale of myne owne Armes the eighteenth day of August in the one and twentieth yeere of the raigne of our Soveraigne Lord Charles by the Grace of God King of great Brittaine ffrance and Ireland defender of the faith &c. A0 Dnj. 1645.
" Wm. Eoberts Vluester Kinge [seal.] of Armes of all Irelande."
ASSEMBLY-ROOMS OF THE BARBER-SURGEONS.
69
The services rendered to the crown consisted, no doubt, of supplies of surgeons to the army and navy. A member of the guild, named James Crosbie, was present at the battle of New- bury, and gave evidence at the trial of King Charles I.
We have no records showing where the Barber-Chirurgeons
held their meetings during the first two centuries of the exist- ed O
ence of their guild. The earliest records now extant of the Corporation of Dublin are the minutes of the transactions of that body from 1448 to 1841. They are engrossed on skins of parchment termed the " Assembly Rolls," preserved in the Muniments Room at the City Hall. In the record of the Christmas Assembly, 1641, the following entry occurs: — "It is likewise ordered and agreed by the authoritie aforesaid " (i e., the Corporation) " that the most worshipfull and fraternitie of the Corporation of Barber-Chirurgeons in this Cittie shall have for the use of the said corporation a lease for the tenure of sixtie and one years to be given at Easter next of St. Paul's Gate in the Cittie containing in length from south to north thirtie feete and in breadth from east to west twentie three feete at the yearlie rent of ff5 * and a couple of capons to Mr. Maior for the time being guarding the portcullis room in time of danger to the cittie."
Paul's (a corruption of the Pole) Gate was situated in the old wall of the city, in Bride-street, close to Hoey's-court (where Dean Swift was born). It was usual to let the apart- ments in the forts and towers protecting the gates of the city to the trades guilds, and even to private persons. In 1664 the Hall of the Barber-Surgeons was occupied by soldiers, and the rent was for the time not charged to the company. In 1700 Paul's Gate became dilapidated and had to be taken down. It was a two- storied tower, 46 feet in height. The upper story was a room 14 feet square, therefore the assembly of the company could not have consisted of very many individuals.
The third charter granted to the Dublin surgeons is dated 10th
* £5.
70
KING JAMES' CHARTER.
February, 1687, in the third year of the reign of James II. It begins by reciting the dissolution of the Corporation of Dublin and the minor corporations which formed a part of it, as the result of a judgment * of the Court of Exchequer : —
" SlatttflS the Second by the Grace of God of England Scotland France and Ireland King defender of the Faith &c. To all unto whom these our present Letters shall come Greeting. Whereas the citty of Dublin in our Kingdom of Ireland hath been an antient citty and that the Mayor Sherriffs Comons and cittizens of the cittizens of the citty of Dublin have used and enjoy clivers Liberties priviledges and ffranchises within the same citty and were or pretended to be one body corporate and politick by the name of the Mayor Sherriffs Comons and citizens of the citty of Dublin. Which ffranchises Liberties and priviledges were lately seized into our hands by a Judgment of our court of Exchequer by which the said body corporate became dissolved since which time we by our Letters pattents under our greate Seale of our kingdom of Ireland bearing date the twenty seventh clay of October in the third yeare of our reign did constitute and again create Dublin and the antient Libertys and precincts of the same a new citty called the citty of Dublin and did therein create a new body corporate and politick by the name of the Mayor Sherriffs comons and cittizens of the citty of Dublin. And whereas our ancestors did by clivers Letters Pattents erect severall Guilds and Fraternityes of divers Misteryes arts and trades to be practiced within the citty of Dublin the suburbs and Franchises thereof which lesser boclyes incorporate and politick or Gilds being members of that greate body corporate the Mayor Sherriffs Comons and citizens of the citty of Dublin were dis- solved by the dissolution of that late greate body corporate. We nevertheless being willing in order to the promoteing of trade and traffic k in our new citty of Dublin to renew the Gild or Corporation of Barbers (of which Guild or Fraternity the Barbers Chirurgeons Apothecaryes and Perriwigmakers of the citty of Dublin were members) to the intent that the severall
* The judgment was the result of litigation arising out of the refusal of the Cor- poration of Dublin to admit Roman Catholics to its freedoms and offices.
KING JAMES ' CHARTER.
71
Ai'ts and Misteryes of Barber-Chirurgeons Apothecaryes and perwigmakers may be the better Exercised and that good order and wholesome rules may be and be observed for the better government of the arts of Barber-Chirurgeons Apothecaryes and perwigmakers within the citty of Dublin the suburbs and Franchises thereof to the avoiding of all evill and all inconveniencies that may happen to our subjects for want of the due Exercise of the arts of Barbers Apothecaryes and perwigmakers within the citty of Dublin the suburbs and Franchises of the same. Know ye that we of our special grace and of our certain knowledge and meer motive with the assent and consent of our right well beloved and right trusty cousin and councellor Richard Earle of Tyrcon- nell our deputy generall and generall governour of our Kingdom of Ireland and according to the tenor and Effect of our certain Letters Signed with our hand and under our Signet bearing date at our court at Whitehall the tenth day of February in the yeare of our Lord one thousand six hundred and eighty seven and in the ffourth yeare of our reign and inrolled in the rolls of our Kingdom of Ireland for us our heirs and Successors Do grant ordain and declare that within the citty of Dublin the suburbs and Franchises thereof there be for ever hereafter one Gild or ffraternity of the Arts of Barbers Apothecaryes and perwigmakers by the name of the Gild or Fraternity of St. Mary Magdalen. And that the Gild or Fraternity aforesaid do consist of one master two wardens and of the brothers of the arts of Barbers Apothecaryes and per- wigmakers of the citty of Dublin and that the Master Wardens and brothers of the Gild or ffraternity aforesaid be and shall be one body corporate and politick in state deed and name by the name- of the Master Wardens and Brothers of the Arts of Barber- Chirurgeons apothecaries and perwigmakers of the Gild or Fra- ternity of St. Mary Magdalen and that the Master Wardens and Brothers of the Gild or Fraternity aforesaid which at present are named and which hereafter shall be Elected into the Gild afore- said be and hereafter shall be one new body corporate and politick by the name of the Master Wardens and Brothers of the arts of Barber-Chirurgeons Apothecaryes and perwigmakers of the Gild or Fraternity of St. Mary Magdalen for us our heires and siifcessors. We do erect create constitute ordain and declare and that they by the same name may and can sue and be sued Answer and be answered defend and be defended in all the Courts of us our heires and successors and elsewhere wheresoever and in all
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actions suites quarrells or demands whatsoever by them or against them to be prosecuted or comencecl. And that they by the name aforesaid do hold perpetuall succession. And that they and their successors be persons able and in law capable to purchase receive and possess all lands and tenements goods and chatties unto them by these presents granted and to purchase other lands and tene- ments not exceeding the vallue of Ten pounds sterling a yeare and goods and chatties and the same to assigne and Demise as any other persons in law capable or any other body corporate and politick in our kingdom of Ireland may or can purchase receive demise grant or assigne.
And further we for us our heires and successors do constitute and nominate that Patrick Archbold is and shall be the present master of the Gild aforesaid and that Robert White and William Cox are and shall be the present Wardens of the Gild aforesaid to continue in those offices untill the ffeast of St. Mary Magdalen falling upon the twenty second day of July next ensuing and from thence till others of the Wardens and brothers of the Gild aforesaid be preferred and Sworn Master and Wardens of the Gild aforesaid respectively so as in the mean time they shall respec- tively live or be not removed by reason of some provisoe in these presents declared. And we doe further for us our heires and successors make and constitute our well beloved William Earle of Limk. John Barnwell knl Robert Barnewell Esq. Richard Archbold Christopher Cruce Thomas Conner Killian Garvan Patrick ffitz Patrick physicians and readers of Anotomy Charles Thompson Henry Walker Patrick Bath John Seamor George Byrne Richard Purcell Morgan Kennedy William Heydon Robert Archbold Robert Bellew Thomas Clare Stephen Archbold Junr Stephen Clynton Robert Witherall Ken. Pendergast Dominick Ryan John Clayton George Gernon Francis Dempsey Richard Nugent Red- mond Tyrrell and Maurice Lomergan to be the ffirst and pi'esent Brothers of the Gild aforesaid, And that they and all who shall hereafter be admitted into the Liberty of the Gild aforesaid be and for the future shall be Brothers of the said Gild to continue in their places dureing their respective naturall lives unless in the mean time they be removed for misbehaviour of whom we will that each and every brother to be hereafter elected into the said ffraternity and Gild be for misdemeanor removable by the Master Wardens and Brothers of the Gild aforesaid or by the major part of them. And further we do for us our heires and successors
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give and grant unto the Master Wardens and Brothers of the said Gild and their successors that they and their successors upon the twenty third day of June unless it be a Lord's day and if it be a Lord's day then upon the day next ensueing in every yeare may and can assemble themselves in some convenient place within the said Citty. And that they so assembled or the major part of them may and can Elect one discreet and sufficient man of the Wardens or brothers of the said Gild who is skillfull in some of the Arts aforesaid to be Master of the said Gild and two discreet and sufficient men skilfull in some of the said Arts of the Brothers of the Gild aforesaid to be Wardens of the said Gild to continue in their offices respectively for one whole yeare from the feast of St. Mary Magdalen then next ensueing if they shall respectively soe long live and from thence untill others of the Wardens or brothers of the said Gild be appointed and sworn Master and Wardens of the Gild aforesaid respectively unless in the mean while by reason of some proviso in these presents mentioned or for misbehaviour they be removed of whom we will that each and every Master and Wardens in these presents mentioned or hereafter to be Elected by the Wardens and Brothers or by the Master and Brothers of the said Gild for the time being as the case shall happen or by the major part of them be for misde- meanor removable. And if it shall happen that the Master and Wardens in these presents nominated or hereafter to be Elected or any of them to dye decease or be removed from his office within the yeare in which they or any of them shall be consitituted Master and Wardens of the said Gild or after Election and before they be respectively sworn. Then it may be lawful] for the Wardens and brothers or the Master and brothers of the sd Gild for the time being as the case shall fall out or for the major part of them within ten days after such death or removall to elect one of the Wardens or Brothers of the said Gild skilfull in some of the said arts or one or two of the Brothers of the said Gild also skilfull in some of the said arts to be Master Warden or Wardens of the Gild aforesaid in the place of him the Master so dead deceased or removed or in the place or places of him or them the Warden or Wardens so dead deceased or removed. To be continued in those offices respectively for the residue of that yeare or for the yeare ensueing as the case shall happen and from thenceforth untill others of the Wardens and brothers of the said Gild be appointed and sworn in those offices
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respectively. And further we will and do for our heires and successors ordain and declare that the present Master of the said Gild take his Corporall oath accustomed for well and truly Exer- cising the said office of Master of the said Gild and the other Oaths following viz1 I do hereby acknowledge profess testifie and declare in my conscience before God and the world that our Soveraigne Lord king James is lawfull and rightfull king of this realm and other his Majesties dominions and countreys And I will bear faith and true allegiance to his Majestie his heires and successors and him and them will defend to the utmost of my power against all conspiracies and attempts whatsoever which shall be made against his or their Crown and dignity and do my best endeavours to disclose and make known to his Majestye his heires and successors or to the Lord deputy or other chiefe governour or governours of this kingdom for the time all treasons and traiterous conspiracies which I shall know or heare to be intended against his Majestie his heires or successors or any of them. And I doe make this recognition and acknowledgment heartily willingly and truly upon the true faith of a Christian so help me God &c. And I doe also declare and believe that it is not lawful upon any pre- tence to take up arms against the King And that I doe abhorr that Traiterous position of takeing arms by his authority against his person or against those that are commissioned by him so help me God &ca before the Mayor of the citty of Dublin and that the Wardens in these presents nominated and who shall hereafter be nominated as Wardens of the said Gild and every of them shall take their usuall corpoi'all oaths for well and truly executeing their offices and the other oaths of allegiance aforesaid before the Master of the said Gild for the time being before they exercise their offices. And that every Master of the said Gild hereafter to be Elected shall take the corporall oaths aforesaid to be taken by the present Master of the said Gild mutatis mutandis before the preceding Master or before the Wardens of the said Gild. And that all Brothers of the said Gild in these presents nominated and who hereafter shall be admitted into the Liberty of the same as brothers of that Gild and every of them do take the usuall cor- porall oath of a brother , or member of the said Guild and the oaths of allegiance aforesaid before the Master of the said Guild for the time being unto which several! persons appointed to receive the said Oaths. We doe for us our heires and successors give power to administer these oaths. And moreover we will and do
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for us our heires and successors grant unto the Master Wardens and brothers of the said Guild and their Successors or the major part of them power authority and Lycence to admitt as many as they will to be brothers of the said Gild. Provided always that every present Brother hereafter to be admitted into the said Gild be or shall be Free of the Citty aforesaid and unless he were before admitted into the Liberty of the same that he be Received into the Liberty of the Guild of the said citty and before the Mayor of the Citty of Dublin that he be sworn a Freeman of the said citty and that the Master and Wardens of the said Gild after they have quitted their offices be brothers of the said Guild dureing their naturall lives respectively Unless in the meantime by reason of some provisoe in these presents or for Misbehaviour they be respectively removed. And furthermore we doe for us our heires and successors Give and grant unto the Master Wardens and Brothers of the Guild of St. Mary Magdalen aforesaid and their successors for the support of the said Gild and pious uses and for the ordination and provision of one or more Chaplain or Chaplains for celebrating Divine Service every yeare within the said citty for the state of the Brotherhood aforesaid for ever and for other publick affaires of the said Gild as many such as much the same and the like Lands and tenements profitts comodyites customes Jurisdictions and priviledges goods and chatties as and which the Master Wardens and brothers of the said Gild or by whatever other name they were incorporated att any time heretofore had or occupyed or ought to have by reason of any charter Letters pattents Grants customes proscriptions or any other Lawfull Tytle whatsoever. To hold of us our heires and successors as of the Castle of Dublin in free and comon socage by the rent and services therefore accustomed. Saveing and out of this Charter or Grant Excepted and Reserved unto us our heires and successors all our Tytles rents Interests and demands whatsoever which we heretofore had to the premisses other then what accrewed unto us by reason of the discontinuance or dissolution of the antient Gild aforesaid. And further we doe for us our heires and successors give and grant unto the said Master Wardens and brothers of the said Gild and their successors That hereafter within the said Gild the Master and Wardens of the said Gild and their successors have the rule governance and oversight of the said Gild and the custody of all Lands Rents possessions Goods and Cliattells unto the said Gild belonging or which shall hereafter appertain. And the Rule
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government and oversight of the Arts of Barbers Chirurgeons Apothecaryes and Perwigmakers and in all things unto the said severall Arts appertaining within the said citty suburbs and ffranchises thereof even unto Barbers within six miles of the said citty and the custody of the Seale of the said Gild. And more over we doe for us our heires and successors give and grant unto the Master Wardens and Brothers of the said Gild and their successors that they and their successors may and can hereafter at their pleasure assemble themselves in their Comon Hall to Treate and consult of matters unto the said Gild appertaining. And being so assembled or the major part of them may and can from time to time make ordain and constitute Laws Statutes and ordinances for the better government of the said Gild and of the brothers of the same and of the arts of Barbers Chirurgeons Apothecaries and perwigmakers within the said citty suburbs and ffranchises thereof even to Barbers within six miles of the said citty and for the correction of every falsity fraud deceit oppression and extortion and of every other crime and offence to be comitted by Barbers Chirurgeons Appothecaryes or perwigmakers or any of them or in . the arts aforesaid or in any thing or matter unto the said Arts appertaining or belonging within the citty of Dublin Suburbs and Franchises of the same even to Barbers within six miles of the said citty or by any Art of Barbers Chirurgeons Appothecaryes or perwigmakers to be practiced within the said citty suburbs and Franchises thereof or as to Barbers within six miles of the said citty such as unto them or the major portion of them shall seeme necessary and requisite and to punish and correct all offenders against such Laws and Statutes so as such Laws Statutes and punishments be reasonable agreeable and not repugnant or contrary to the Laws or Statutes of this Kingdome of Ireland. And that the Master and Wardens of the said Gild and their successors have and by these presents shall have full power and Authority to Inquire as unto them shall seeme most expedient from time to time of all trespasses deceits frauds oppressions extortions and other crimes done perpetrated and that shall be perpetrated by whomsoever who in the said citty suburbs and Franchises thereof or as to Barbers within six miles of the said citty do or shall practice the arts of Barbers Chirurgeons apothecaries perwigmakers or any of them and by their servants and apprentices in all things which unto the same arts can belong within the said citty suburbs and Franchises thereof as to Barbers within six miles of the said
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citty and of every matter and tiling unto the arts of Barber Chirurgeons Appothecai'ies and perwigmakers appertaining in the said citty suburbs and Franchises of the same even unto Barbers within six miles of the said citty and them at the suite of Com- plainants to heare and truly determine. And damages to the party complaining to decree according to justice and execution to award and all and every of those who before the same Master and Wardens by due examination or other lawfull manner shall be found guilty of either or any of the Articles aforesaid to chastise correct and amend by Fines Ransoms Imprisonment of the body or amercements as the case requires and that the keeper of the Prison of our citty of Dublin for the time being or his deputy such persons guilty and convicted by Warrant or Warrants of the same Master and Wardens do receive into custody of Impri- sonment and there safely to keep them untill they be enlarged by due forme of Law or by Warrant of the Master and Wardens of the said Guild Granting for us our heires and successors unto the said keeper and his Deputy full power to receive such persons convicted unto him comited by the authority aforesaid without the impeachment of us our heires or successors. And that the said Masters and Wardens of the said Guild and their successors have cognizance of pleas touching all trespass debts accompts contracts agreements receipts ffalshoods and imprisonments between any concerning the arts aforesaid and their servants or apprentices or between any other person and every artificer aforesaid by suit complaining concerning whatever matter unto the said arts apper- taining within the said citty suburbs and Franchises thereof even unto Barbers within six miles of the said citty to be holden before the Master and Wardens of the said Guild and their successors where they please within the said citty suburbs and franchises thereof as also the Fines ransomes and amerciaments in that behalfe acrewing when done and awarded by the servants of the said Gild to be collected and Levyed for the use of the said Guild. And further we do for us our heirs and successors appoint and ordain that when any person of the arts aforesaid will take an apprentice of the said arts he doe first cause him who intends to be an apprentice to come before the Master and Wardens of the said Gild for the time being and the Clerke of the said Guild who are discreetly to consider if such an apprentice be at his own free disposall and be of good behaviour which if he be found to be such that then he be received an apprentice for the terme of seven
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yeares and that his Indenture thereof before the Master and Wardens of the said Gild for the time being be entred within two months next ensuing by the clerk of the said Guild and he who takes any one for an apprentice otherwise then as aforesaid such takeing shall be void. Nevertheless that the taker be holden forthwith to pay halfe a Mark for the use of the said Gild or fraternity and as often as any runaway apprentice of the said Arts or of any of them in the said citty suburbs and Franchises thereof or as to Barbers within six miles of the said citty as is aforesaid shall be taken into service. That then it may be lawfull for the Master of such apprentice in his proper person or by his attorney haveing letters testimoniall under the comon seale of the said Guild testifying that such a one is his runaway apprentice to take and arrest the same apprentice wherever he shall be found and to bring him back to his own proper home, and to make him serve him as in Justice he ought. And that after every apprentice hath served out his time viz1 the terme of seven years that such apprentice by his master and by the said Master and Wardens for the time being be brought to the Gildhall of the said citty and that upon theire testimony he be there sworn and received into the Liberty of the said Gild before the Mayor of the city of Dublin. And that noe person of the said Arts be hereafter received or taken into the obtaining the Liberty of the said city without the assent of the Master and Wardens of the said Gild for the time being &c.'of other good men of the same arts residing in the said city. And that noe person use or Exercise any of the Arts aforesaid in the said city Suburbs or Franchises thereof or as to Barbers within six miles of the said city unless by the allowance of such Master and Wardens for the time being he be found capable to practice the said Arts and that he be admitted into the Guild of the Liberty of said city. And we do further grant unto the Master Wardens and Brothers of the said Gild and their Successors That they and their Successors have and hold and for the times ensueing enjoy the same station precedence and place among the Guilds and Fraternityes of the city of Dublin now erected or hereafter to be erected in publick meetings as the Guilds of Barbers appothecaries and perwigmakers of the citty of Dublin or by whatever other name they were Incorporated heretofore had or ought to have at any time heretofore had or ought to have at any time heretofore (sic in original) and no otherwise or in any other manner. And further-
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more we do for us our heires and successors give and grant unto the said Master Wardens and Brothers of the said Guild and their successors That they and their successors or the major part of them may admitt Women of the said Guild as Sisters of the said Guild. And for the advancement of trade and to the intent that the poore children of ffreemen of the citty of Dublin may be the better maintained We do for us our heires and successors Charge and strictly comand the Master Wardens and brothers of the Guild and their successors that they and their successors doe every yeare hereafter take two of the boys who are and shall be in the hospitall of the citty of Dublin att Oxmantown such who shall be found fitt to Learn any of the Arts aforesaid and who are approved by the Governour of the said Hospitall and that such boys be by them or some of them educated in some of the said Arts for seven yeares then next ensuing anything in these presents to the contrary notwithstanding. And that there be in the said Guild one Clerk to write the Acts and Records of the said Guild to be chosen by the Master Wardens and brothers of the said Guild for the time being or the major part of them. And we do for us our heires and successors make and constitute Thomas Burke Gent, to be the first and present Clerk of the said Guild To be continued in that office dureing his good behaviour and that the present Clerk and he who shall hereafter be Clerk to the said Guild have and shall have such the same and the like wages fees and profitts which any clerk of the said Guild at any time heretofore had or received and that the said Master Wardens and brothers of the said Guild and their successors or the major part of them may and can make and con- stitute as many and such servants and Beadles as unto them shall seem most fitt for the bussyness of the said Burrow such servants and Beadles to be continued in their offices dureing the pleasure of the Master Wardens and Brothers of the said Guild for the time being or the major part of them so as the present clerk and he who hereafter shall be Clerk for the said Guild and every Inferior officer so from time to time elected do before he exercise his office take the usual corporall oath for well and truly exercising his office and the other oaths of allegiance aforesaid before the Master of the said Guild for the time being unto whom we do for us our heirs and successors give power to administer those oaths and that they and their successors have a comon scale for the service of their bussiness provided always and we do for us our heires and successors by these presents reserve and give full power and
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Authority unto our Deputy generall and other cheife governour or governours of us our heires and successors of our Kingdome of Ireland for the time being to remove and declare to he removed the Master Wardens or other officers of the said Guild by these presents nominated and constituted or hereafter to be elected and constituted at the will and pleasure of our Deputy Generall and other cbiefe governour or governours of us our heires and successors of our Kingdom of Ireland for the time being by any order of the privy councill of us our heirs and successors of our Kingdom of Ireland under their hands in writeing unto them respectively signified And as often as our deputy generall or chief e governour or governours of us our heires and successors of our Kingdom of Ire- land shall from time to time by any such order of our privy councill of our Kingdom of Ireland declare such and such sort of Master Wardens or Officers or either or any of them so removed or to be removed from their respective offices. That then and from thence- forth all such person or persons so removed or declared to be removed from their respective offices is are and shall without any further process be ipso facto removed. And so as often as the case shall so happen anything to the contrary notwithstanding. And moreover we of our further speciall grace and of our certaine knowledge and meer motion Will and do for us our heires and successors give and grant unto the said Master Wardens and Brothers of the said Guild and their successors for ever. That these our Letters Patents and every article and clause therein contained or in the inrollm' of the same be construed interpreted adjudged to the best advantage benefitt and favour of the said Master Wardens and Brothers of the Guild of St. Mary Magdalen aforesaid and their successors towards and against us our heires and successors as well in our courts as elsewhere wheresoever without any confir- mation Lycence or tolleration to be hereafter procured or obtained. Notwithstanding the statute of not putting lands and tenements to Mortmaine and notwithstanding the statute made at Limerick in the thirty-third yeare of King Henry the Eighth for Lands given by the King and any other statute or any other thing cause or matter whatsoever to the contrary notwithstanding. Provided always that these our Letters be inrolled in the rolls of our Court of Chancery of our Kingdom of Ireland within six months after the date of these presents. In Wittness whereof we have caused these our Lettei's to be made patent. Wittness our said Deputy generall and generall governour of our Kingdom of Ireland at
i
ADMISSION TO TRADE GUILDS.
81
Dublin the twenty sixth day of May in the fourth yeare of our reigne.
" Inrolled the fifth day of July in the fourth yeare of the reigne of King James the Second.
" Exd p. Oha. Baldwin
" D. Che. & Custody Rotlor."
During the greater part, perhaps the whole, of the period of the existence of the Companies of Barber- Chirurgeons in both London and Dublin, there were surgeons who repudiated professional con- nexion of any kind with the barbers. In the early part of the last century there were many surgeons in Dublin who were not con- nected with the company. Those persons were Army Surgeons, and men of liberal education who had studied in the Univer- sities, or had served an apprenticeship to surgeons of good social standing. On the other hand, persons of a lower grade in society, who were not "free" of the Brotherhood, frequently practised as chirurgeons or apothecaries, and were occasionally prosecuted by the guild.
The regular mode of admission to a guild was by an apprentice- ship of five or seven years' duration — long after the establishment of the Royal College of Surgeons an apprenticeship of seven years to a surgeon was not unusual. The barber-surgeons were, however, veiy liberal in admitting to their guild " foreigners," as those who were not regularly educated in a trade were termed. Foreigners, when admitted to the privileges of practice, were termed quarter brothers, because at the quarterly meetings of the guild they were obliged to pay a sum of money termed quarterage. The City Companies were never very exclusive in Dublin, owing to the desire to induce the English, Scotch, and foreigners to settle iu their town.
In 1672 the Lord Lieutenant in Council, acting under the pro- visions of an Act of Parliament, framed a set of rules for all the fortified towns in Ireland, by which, on payment of a fine of 20s., any "foreigner" was allowed to join any guild of tradesmen he might elect. This privilege was confirmed by an Act passed in the 19th year of the reign of George III. The large number of Surgeons —
o
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ACTION AGAINST THE BARBER-SURGEONS.
not barber-surgeons — practising in Dublin in the eighteenth century- is a proof that there was practically free trade in surgery at that time.
By the charter granted to the King and Queen's College of Physicians in 1692, no person could legally practise medicine in Dublin, or within a circuit of seven miles thereof, without a licence from the college ; yet we find that many graduates of British and foreign universities practised in Dublin, and were never licensed by the college. It would appear, however, that in the early days of the college attempts to prevent barber-chirurgeons and apothe- caries from administering internal remedies had been made. In 1725 the college petitioned Parliament, setting forth that their charter had been found insufficient to prevent unskilful and illiterate persons from practising physic, and praying for additional powers. A bill to grant them the powers sought for was introduced into the House of Commons, but, owing to the opposition of the barber-surgeons and of other practitioners, it was without difficulty defeated.
Although surgeons not free of the corporation appear to have been rarely interfered with by the latter they felt mortified that their art, which they regarded as a liberal one, should be practised by persons esteemed to be socially on the level of tradesmen who shaved and made wigs. In the Thorpe collection of pamphlets in the National Library, Kildare-street, there is a tract entitled " Beasons for Begulating the Practice of Surgery in the City of Dublin, by Making the Surgeons a Distinct Society from the Barbers, Peruke-makers, &c. Humbly offered to the Considera- tion of the Lords Spiritual and Temporal and the Commons in Parliament Assembled." It bears no date, but as " Her Majesty" is referred to, it evidently belongs to the reign of Queen Anne. It is as follows : —
" There is not any place where surgery hath the least Beputa- tion (except in this Kingdom) but every Person professing that Art is obliged to prove himself qualify'd before he is admitted to Practice. The present Corporation in this City is composed of Barbers Surgeons Apothecaries and Peruke-Makers which (instead
THE PURE SURGEONS' PETITION FOR INCORPORATION. 83
of Encouraging the true Professors of Surgery) is a refuge for Empiricks Impudent Quacks Women and other Idle Persons who quit the trades to which they were bred and wherein they might be useful to the Commonwealth to undertake a Profession whereof they are entirely ignorant to the ruine of their Fellow Subjects. There is not any person (tho of the most infamous character) who cannot obtain his Freedom of the Corporation by vertue whereof the meanest Brother assumeth the Liberty and it is a sufficient Recommendation for him to Practice Surgery with as much authority as the most Experienced Surgeon. There are in the Corporation at least Ten Barbers &ct for one Surgeon so that it is impossible for the Surgeons to make any Regulation because they must inevitably be out-voted by the majority of the others.
" There is not the least Affinity between Surgery Peruke- Making and the Feat or Craft of Barbery it not being necessary for a Surgeon to know how to make a Peruke or Cut Hair nor is it any part of a Barber's or Peruke Maker's Trade to perform any operation in Surgery.
" It is requisite for a Surgeon (to arrive to a tolerable perfec- tion in his profession) to have a reasonable understanding of Latin and Greek whereas a Peruke-Maker or a Barber may be Masters of their Trades though they are wholly illiterate.
" "Wherefore it is Humbly offer'd to the consideration of this Honurable Assembly whether it is not highly and dangerous to the health of Her Majesty's good subjects that such Barbers &ct as take upon them (though not in the least qualified) to Practice Surgery shou'd be allow'd the same Priviledge therein as Surgeons who have taken great pains to make themselves Masters of the Art of Surgery and whose Parents have been at great expence to make them capable.
" The advantages which will necessarily arise from such a Regulation will be
" The preservation of many Subjects' lives which are lost by the gross Errors and the Barbarous and Inhumane Practices of Impudent [gnorant Pretenders of which there are too many instances which daily offer to the great prejudice of the Publick and discredit of the Profession.
"It will encourage such persons as can afford to give their Children Learning sufficient for the Profession to breed them to it.
" It will oblige Apprentices to be diligent and studious in the
84 BARBER-CHIRURGEONS AND SURGEONS — CORRESPONDENCE.
Profession whereby the Kingdom and Army will be supply'd with a succession of Experienced and Judicious Surgeons.
" It will be an encouragement to Honest and Skilful Practi- tioners to converse with greater freedom so as to improve the art.
" It is probable (that in some time) the Professors of Surgery in this Kingdom may acquire such a reputation as may prevent Young Men's going into foreign Countreys to compleat their studies.
" Many other Reasons may be offer'd but it is hoped that these may prove sufficient to make this August Assembly sensible of the great benefit a due Regulation of the practice of Surgery will be to the Publick and to induce them to Enact such Laws as in their Wisdom shall be thought most proper to encourage the true Practice of Surgery in this Kingdom and punish the abuse thereof."
This statement is probably that referred to in a resolution on the books of the Barber-surgeons' Company, dated 30th Septem- ber, 1703, to take measures to frustrate the attempts of certain members of the guild and several " foreigners," who had combined together and presented an address to Parliament, with the view of " preventing the members of the Corporation who were not educated or bred chirurgeons from practising surgery, as they had a right to do under their charters," and the opinion of counsel was ordered to be taken.
In 1716 the Corporation had a correspondence with Mr. Proby, the Surgeon-General, in reference to his practising as a surgeon without being free of the fraternity. They complained that the high position which he occupied induced many persons to practise surgery in Dublin without having become " quarter brethren" of the guild. Proby wrote polite replies to the communications from the company, but expressed his doubts that all the surgeons in Dublin could be combined in one body owing to the peculiar constitution of the Corporation. In 1721 the communications were renewed. I gather from them that at that time the surgeons of Dublin formed a society, who met monthly in the evening. The Corporation proposed to send four of their number to confer with the Surgeons' Society. The Conference does not appear to have taken place ;
SOCIAL PRACTICES OF THE BARBER-SURGEONS. 85
for it is stated that at the surgeons' meeting, held on the 3rd July, 1721, there were so many army surgeons present that the subject of amalgamation could not be discussed. It was, however, arranged that four of the surgeons should meet a like number of the barber-surgeons in friendly discussion. Nothing came out of these deliberations.
The barber-surgeons were, like other guilds, disposed to be festive on suitable occasions. As a body they favoured Mr. LaTouche in his celebrated contest, in 1767, with the Marquis of Kildare for the representation of Dublin in the House of Commons. In the Dublin Register and Freeman's Journal, 10th November, 1767, the following advertisement appears : — "The Free-Brothers of the Corporation of Barber-surgeons, friends of J ohn La Touch, Esq., intend dining at Mr. Cowes, in Coles' Alley, Castle-street, on this day, being 10th November, at 4 o'clock. The brethren that intend to dine are requested to leave their names at the Bar. Dinner on the table at 4 o'clock."
The guild were, in common with the other city companies, required to join in the procession which every third year perambu- lated the city. This itinei'ary was termed " Riding the franchise," and was a very ancient usage, emblematic of the jurisdiction of the Corporation in the city. Many of the brethren were averse to taking part in these displays, because of the loss of time which they caused. On the 16th July, 1722, the Company ordered that those " who do not ride the franchise be fined 10s." On the 30th June, 1755, the Guild came to a different conclusion; for they resolved to ask the Lord Mayor to " excuse this Corpora- tion " from riding the franchise. On 1st August, 1767, Faulkner s Journal states that the Corporation perambulated the city and its liberties, and notices that the colours of the barber-surgeons were purple, cherry, and red, and those of the apothecaries purple and orange.
From the close of the 17th century the brethren appeared really anxious that the members of the different crafts united in the guild should keep to their special calling. Members belonging to the barbers' craft were restrained from practising surgery,
86 THE COMPANY BECOMING MERE BARBERS.
except bleeding or the drawing of teeth ; and the medical barbers and the wig-makers were, under pains and penalties, prevented from practising pharmacy.
In 1736 the number of the council of the Corporation was increased to 25. In this year Edward Smith, a chirurgeon, was master ; one of the wardens — Bryan M'Cabe — was a barber, and the second warden, Richard Cox, was an apothecary.
The surgeons were now dwindling away. Very few aspirants for the franchise appeared to replace the losses caused by death. When election-to-office day arrived, in 1742, it was found that there was no chirurgical brother who had not already filled a warden's chair ; and they were therefore obliged to instal a barber in the warden's chair, which hitherto had always been occupied by a chirurgeon if the master were a barber. The Cor- poration, seeing that they were rapidly becoming a company of pure barbers, made attempts to rehabilitate the institution. At a meeting, held on the 12th October, 1741, they resolved to present the freedom of the Corporation to the President, Censors, and Fellows of the College of Physicians. Shortly afterwards they enacted that no surgeon should be granted the freedom of the Corporation until he had undergone an examination by the College of Physicians, and had received from the College a certificate of competency. The candidates for the apothecaries' craft in the guild were to be similarly examined. It was proposed, however, that whenever there were twelve qualified chirurgeons in the Cor- poration they should form a Board of Examiners, but the exami- nations were to be conducted in the presence of the President and Censors of the College of Physicians. In the event of the officers of the College declining or neglecting to be present, the examina- tion was nevertheless to be proceeded with. This proposal was an undoubted proof of the desire of the Corporation to improve the condition of surgery, but it does not seem to have met with any response from the College of Physicians.
Some of the persons named in the charter granted by King James II. are described as " readers of anatomy," and probably they may have occasionally delivered lectures on that subject to
WERE APPRENTICES EXAMINED % — TAILORS' HALL. 87
the guild. The company were empowered to examine the appren- tices as to their fitness to be enrolled as brethren. There is, however, no evidence to show that the chirurgical apprentices who had served their full term were always, or even generally, examined as to their competency before admitting them to the fraternity. It is probable that " foreigners " were subjected to some kind of examination. Hues Occurrences (a Dublin newspaper) for February 8th, 1731, announces the arrival of the Chevalier Taylor. This person was a celebrated oculist and undoubtedly a man of ability, but many of the faculty regarded him as a charlatan. The Dublin barber-chirurgeons presented him with the freedom of the Corporation, the diploma being contained in a handsome silver box. This presentation called forth an anonymous tract denouncing the Corporation for conferring their freedom upon a quack, and asserting that they received for it the handsome fee of £161. The Corporation, in an advertisement published in Hue's Occurrences, 4th April, 1732, repudiated these "slanderous statements," and declared that the Chevalier had been duly examined and his skill fully tested in surgical operations by a select committee com- posed of eight surgeons and apothecaries.
The minute books of the guild show that early in the eighteenth century their meetings were held in Tailors' Hall, Back-lane. They were apparently not rich enough to build one for their exclusive use, as the London fraternity and many of the Dublin guilds had done. The Tailors' Hall was erected in 1706, and for many years was used as the meeting place of several guilds who had no halls of their own. Public meetings were held in it, as were those of the Grand Lodge of Freemasons and of the " United Irishmen," in their early days. When the Municipal Reform Act of 1840 abolished as legalised corporations the Dublin guilds, the Tailors' Guild converted their hall into a school, and at present it is used as a place for religious meetings. The Merchants' Hall on Merchants'-quay, the Weavers' Hall on the Coombe, and the Tailors' Hall, were the only guild halls at all comparable With those of the London Companies. It is worth noting that the Tailors' Hall was erected on the site of a building once a
88
THE APOTHECARIES' GUILD.
college of the University of Dublin, and subsequently a military hospital.
In 1745 the Barber-surgeons' Company began that process of disintegration which 95 years later terminated in their extinction. The apothecaries belonging to the guild were somewhat numerous, whilst the surgical members were very .few. There were apothe- caries, too, in still greater numbers practising in Dublin who were " foreigners." A charter granted by George II. incorporated the Dublin apothecaries into a guild dedicated to St. Luke. The guild were to be governed by a master, two wardens, and thirteen assistants, who were to be elected annually. They were to be exempted from attendance on juries and from filling parish offices, and empowered to deal with offenders against their privileges. The barber-surgeons formed No. 4 of the twenty-four city companies, the three companies senior to them being Trinity guild, the tailors, and the smiths. They had four representatives in the Commons, or lower House of the Corporation of Dublin. Of two of these they were deprived after the incorporation of the apothecaries as a distinct guild; and the latter having become the. twenty-fifth of the city guilds were allowed two representatives in the Corporation. The charter is dated 18th September, 1745, but in the Dublin Journal for January 13, 1746, there is an advertisement from the Barber-surgeons' Company denouncing certain "refractory brothers and irregular practitioners amongst the apothecaries for seeking for a charter."
In 1750 the new Corporation passed a law restricting their membership to practising apothecaries, but repealed it in 1777. In 1792 an Act of Parliament constituted the apothecaries into the Corporation of the Apothecaries' Hall, which still exists. The new institution was a national, not a municipal one. Henceforth the Corporation of Apothecaries were of use only as a means of acquiring political rights.
The proceedings of the barber-surgeons possess, after the seces- sion of the apothecaries, very little medical interest. The members were nearly altogether barbers, or persons neither chirurgeons nor barbers, who desired membership for purely political purposes.
EXTINCTION OF BARBERS AND APOTHECARIES' GUILDS. 89
In 1773 and 1775 bills for regulating the profession and practice of surgery and pharmacy were introduced into the House of Commons, but were not persevered with.
In 1784 the union between the barbers and surgeons was dis- solved de facto, though perhaps not de jure, by the creation of a Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland. The Irish surgeon's privi- leges were no longer confined within the narrow boundaries of a civic trade's union : he became a constituent of a national institution. The Barber-surgeons' Company were, however, not dissolved, nor were they expressly forbidden to continue styling themselves the Fraternity of Barber-chirurgeons. In the Dublin Directories, for many years after the foundation of the College of Surgeons, the guild of St. Mary Magdalene are called the barbers, but during the latter years of their existence they are frequently termed barber-surgeons. In voting the freedom of their guild, in 1819, to Alderman Sir William M'Kenny, ex-Lord Mayor, they style themselves barber-surgeons. I see nothing in the charters of the College which could have prevented the free brothers of the company from practising surgery.
Very few surgeons belonged to the Corporation in the year 1784. Only one of the founders of the College, Philip Woodroffe, was a barber-surgeon ; he was admitted on the 17th of November, 1780. Gerard Macklin, State-surgeon, was a warden's peer in 1792. In 1840 the Corporation shared the fate of the other municipal bodies dissolved by the Reform Act. The last master, Mr. Michael Farrell, of Hafcourt-street, Dublin, delivered the charters and other docu- ments belonging to the Company to the late erudite Dr. William Daniel Moore, of Dublin, who deposited them in the library of Trinity College. They include the Company's Charters, Books of Transactions from 1703, Lists of Brothers, Roll-Book for 1827, Book of Quarterages and of Entry of Foreigners, 1688, and Book for Enrolment of Apprentices, dated 1535, but containing no entries earlier than 1587. All are contained in a wooden box covered with red leather and emblazoned with the arms of the Company. Through the courtesy of the Board of Trinity College and of their courteous librarians I have been enabled to make copies of the
90
PROVINCIAL BARBERS' GUILDS.
charters, and to pei'use the books, &c., of this extinct civic and surgical institution — the most ancient medical corporation in the United Kingdom.
In the provincial cities in which the barber-surgeons were sufficiently numerous to form a society it seems probable that they were constituted into ordinary trades' guilds. I cannot discover that they were in any town, save Dublin, incorporated by Royal authority. In Cork they were at an early period constituted a guild by the Corporation of that city, whose charter enabled them to grant sub-charters to city companies. On the 23rd August, 1732, the Corporation of Cork resolved — "Whereas there has been a Bill preferred by some refractory persons against the Company of the Barber-surgeons of this City : ordered that said Company be supported in their ancient rights. If any freeman do assist such refractory persons he shall be disfranchised : and we appoint Mi\ Russell Wood, Attorney, to assist the Company in preserving their rights." It would seem that at this time the Cork surgeons were as anxious as their Dublin confreres to sever them- selves from the barbers. In Limerick the Barber-surgeons were constituted a guild by the Municipal Corporation. They had a master and two wardens.
CHAPTER IV.
SURGICAL EDUCATION AND EXAMINATIONS IN IRELAND PRIOR TO THE FOUNDATION OF THE COLLEGE OF SURGEONS.
In the early ages of the Christian era, Ireland attained to gi'eat celebrity as a centre of intellectual and religious life ; but the incessant wars waged between the native Irish and the Anglo- Norman settlers, and amongst the native septs themselves, produced a disastrous effect upon the civilisation of the country. The use of arms, rather than the cultivation of letters, became general. The want of security for life and fortune deterred wealthy persons from coming to or remaining in the country, to which, on the contrary, penniless but warlike adventurers flocked in great numbers. Long before the advent of the sixteenth century the earlier civilisa- tion of Ireland had vanished.
In 1312 Archbishop Leech obtained from Pope Clement V. a Bull for the foundation of a university in Ireland, but the archbishop died before he could make any use of his powers. In 1320 a university was established in connexion with St. Patrick's Cathedral by Alexander De Becknor, acting on the authority of Pope John XXII. It lasted but a short time, and an attempt to revive it, made in 1568, by the Lord Deputy, Sir Henry Sydney, proved a failure.
In 1591 Trinity College, Dublin, was founded; and although it nearly perished in the first decade of its existence, it weathered the fierce gales to which it was exposed, and is now one of the most important educational institutions in Europe. Up to the year 1616 (inclusive), 109 persons proceeded to degrees in the new university, but only one of them graduated in medicine.
In Bishop Bedell's statutes for the University, framed in 1628, it is enacted that one of the Fellows shall be a Professor of
92
PUBLIC rilYSICIANS AND APOTHECARIES.
Physic, and shall deliver lectures in that faculty. This statute was confirmed by Charles I. The Medical Fellows were, as a rule, incompetent to act as Professors of Physic.
In 1598 mention is made in the College Register of a grant of £40 yearly for a " physician's pay." In this way it is conjectured the Regius Professorship originated ; but it is more likely that the grant was made to the College, not for educational purposes, but in order that it might supply a physician for the use of the troops and other residents in the city. The grant is termed " concor datum." A concordatum of twenty shillings and one day's pay from every soldier in garrison was granted by Lord Deputy Sydney, in 1566, to Thomas Smith, apothecary, to encourage him to remain in Dublin, to act as apothecary, and to supply " fresshe and newe druggs and other Apothecary e Wares in plentifull manner to the nedefull and good helpe of suche of the Englishe byrthe in this realme resident, and of the nobilitie and others of the graver and civylier sorte of this realme." In 1580 the Corpo- ration of Dublin granted a yearly stipend of £10 to Dr. Nicholas Hykie to induce him to make their city his abode. This, no doubt, was the origin of the office of City Surgeon. William Leake, of 20 Stephens-green, who died in 1823, was the last person to hold that office.
On the 10th November, 1626, the Corporation of Cork invited Mr. Patrick Meade, f z * John, Doctor of Physick, to practise in Cork. He was to receive £10 a year, rent for a house. He was invited not only for his skill, but also on account of his " family descent, being a child born of this citie." It was hoped that he would " minister the poor physicke, out of charitable disposition, gratis." By a curious coincidence, in the same year the neigh- bouring Corporation of Youghal permitted "Thomas Adams, Gent,, Practitioner in the Faculty of Physicke," to keep an apothecary's shop in their town, first, because " he married a Free- man's wife " (widow, rather, let us trust) ; and, secondly, because there was no apothecary in the town.
In 1654 a Fraternity of Physicians was established in Trinity
* Son of John Meade.
THE COLLEGE OF PHYSICIANS.
93
Hall, a building belonging to the Dublin University, situated behind the south side of Dame-street. It lasted only until 1667, when it was reorganised into the " Colledge of Physitians in Dublin," at Trinity Hall, by a charter of Charles II. This College must be regarded as a dependency of the University, as the Board of Trinity College appointed the President, and in other ways the institu- tions were connected. The College of Physicians were, however, endowed with powers analogous to those of the London College of Physicians — no person could practise physic in or within seven miles of Dublin without their permission.
In 1 692 the College surrendered their charter, and were reincor- porated by William and Mary under the title of the King and Queen's College of Physicians in Ireland. Practice in the city and neighbourhood was restricted to the Fellows and Licentiates. In the rest of Ireland only graduates of Dublin, Oxford, and Cambridge could practise physic, in addition to those licensed by the College of Physicians.
The College were entrusted with the supervision of apothecaries, druggists, and midwives. Apothecaries were required to have their apprentices tested as to their knowledge of Latin by the College. They had power to enter forcibly into houses where it was sus- pected adulterated drugs were kept, and to seize upon them. Power to examine witnesses upon oath, and to fine and imprison offenders, was given to them. It was also ordained that the College should be entitled to receive annually the bodies of six executed male- factors for " anatomies," so that they might have " further and better knowledge, instruction, and experience in the faculty and science of physic and surgery." From this we must infer that the Fellows and Licentiates might, if they choose, legally practise surgery, notwithstanding the privileges of the Barber-Chirurgeon's Company. In relation to this point it is noteworthy that in an Act of Parliament passed in 1743 a Professorship of " Surgery and Midwifery" was constituted in connexion with the College of Physicians.
It is evident that there were very few opportunities of studying anatomy in Ireland up to the middle of the last century. The
.1
94
INSTRUCTION IN ANATOMY.
instruction in the Medical School of the University appears to have been confined chiefly to professorial demonstrations. There was very little dissecting-room work such as we now have. One of the statutes of the University, framed by Sir William Temple, provided that every candidate for a medical degree must have been present at the dissection of three bodies. It is probable that these so-called dissections were often little more elaborate than an exten- sive post-mortem examination for pathological purposes. That the College of Physicians occasionally claimed the bodies of executed persons is shown by some records referred to in Dr. Belcher's work on the College. An account-book, beginning in 1672, mentions the items of expenditure incurred in connexion with the dissection of a body. The total is £2 4s. 10d., of which 9s. was given to the " souldiers who watched," and 3s. to " the said souldiers in drinke." Some years later Molyneux describes the dissection of a malefactor, and the conversion of his osseous remains into a " skeleton." He says that the dissection lasted for a week, and that the chirurgeons and physicians present at it " spoke at random as the pax*ts pre- sented themselves." About this time Mullen, already referred to, carried on his anatomical studies, more, apparently, as an original inquirer than a mere learner of anatomy.
Early in the eighteenth century there were several physicians practising in Dublin who had studied in Leyden, Montpelier, and other continental medical schools, where they had the opportunities of acquiring a knowledge of practical anatomy. There were sur- geons, too, who had been educated abroad, especially in Paris. Those persons were capable of teaching anatomy, and no doubt they did so in private.
The Company of Barber-Surgeons do not seem to have instituted any systematic courses of lectures on anatomy or surgery. The London fraternity, from an early period, made some show of educational zeal. Early in the seventeenth century Dr. Gwvn delivered before them systematic courses of lectures on anatomy and surgery. In 1634 Dr. Alexander Bead commenced to lecture before the Company, and continued to do so for many years. His lectures were published in a collected form in 1750, and we learn
STEALING BODIES FOR DISSECTION.
95
from them that by a law of the Barber-Surgeons' Company their lecturer on surgery and anatomy should be a doctor of physic.
The Dublin Barber-Chirurgeons' Guild made some pretence to be an examining body, but the education of apprentices they left altogether in the hands of their masters. That many members of the Company never learned the most elementary anatomy is evident from the fact that some of them were quite illiterate, even so late as the close of the seventeenth century. A man unable to write was unlikely to have studied anatomy.
About the middle of the eighteenth century there seems to have been some anatomical work going on in Dublin, as the robbery of bodies for dissection purposes were of frequent occurrence. In May, 1732, the gravedigger of St. Andrew's churchyard was committed to prison for having aided in stealing bodies from that cemetery. The following advertisement appeared in Faulkner's Dublin Journal for December, 1742 : —
" St. Andrew's Paeish, Dublin,
" Dec. list, 1742.
" Whereas we are informed that Richard Fox, late gravedigger, with the assistance of several other persons unknown, hath bar- barously, inhumanly, and wickedly opened the grave of a gentleman who was buried in the churchyard of the said parish, and took away his body, to the great grief and trouble of his friends. We therefore, the minister, churchwardens, and parishioners, in vestiy assembled, whereof due notice was given in church on the Lord's clay next preceding the date hereof, are come to the following resolutions : — Resolved — That the said R. F. and his accomplices be prosecuted with the utmost severity of the law. Resolved — That the prosecution be carried on at the expense of the parish. Resolved — That all sums of money laid out and expended by the said churchwardens, or any other person or persons employed by them on such prosecution, be allowed by this parish in the church- Wardens' accounts. Resolved — That, if it be thought convenient to carry on any prosecution against any other person or persons for taking away any other corp or corps out of the church or churchyard of this parish, any time within these six months past, the prosecution shall be carried on, one-half at the expense of the ltev. Dr. Bradford, vicar, the other at the expense of the parish,
96
SIR PATRICK DUN.
to which the said D. B. hath agreed. Resolved — That the above resolution be made public. Signed by order. — James Fetherston, Vestry Clerk.
" The above R. F. was employed by the sexton of the said parish as gravedigger, and having made his escape from justice, we, the churchwardens, do promise to pay to any person that shall apprehend the said Fox and bring him to justice, £2 5s. 6d. N.B. — The said Fox is blind of one eye, a tall thin young man, wore a blue coat and pewter buttons.
" James Lane, )
« Joseph Cope,} Churchwardens.
" N.B. — £3 3s. more reward will be given."
The following advertisement in the same journal shows that the body-snatchers were at work at the west, as