Medicine in antient Erin : an historical sketch from Celtic to mediaeval times : lecture memoranda, British Medical Association, Belfast, 1909 / [with a foreword by Sir Henry S. Wellcome.].

  • Burroughs Wellcome and Company.
Date:
[1909?]
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Licence: Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

Credit: Medicine in antient Erin : an historical sketch from Celtic to mediaeval times : lecture memoranda, British Medical Association, Belfast, 1909 / [with a foreword by Sir Henry S. Wellcome.]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    Medicine in antient Erin It has been shown from comparative philology that the Celts, and kindred races who were the earliest colonisers in antient Ireland, originally came from the East. Sweeping like a wave across Celtic colonisers Greece and Gaul, they eventually settled of Erin in parts of Ireland, the Scottish Highlands, and in Wales. They brought with them their arts, laws and customs, the Brehon, or old Celtic laws, which were formed centuries before the Christian Era, being the most antient code in Europe. These peoples, the Eomorians, the Nemedians, the Tnatha De Danaans, the Eirbolgs, and the Milesians, who came under the leadership of Partholan, were all races derived from one Celtic stock, and spoke the same language. The Milesians were the last of the races to invade Ireland, and from them the chief traditions of antient Elrin are traced. It is evidenced from these early traditions that medicine and surgery were carefully studied and cultivated in antient Ireland to a remarkable degree. Like the Greeks and other races of antiquity, the Irish had their great traditional physicians. Macferbis, in his Book of Genealogy, which was corn- oiled in the seventeenth century from early Earliest Celtic records now lost, states :— physicians “ Thus sayeth the antient authority : “ The first doctor that was ever in Erinn was Capa; “ E'er the healing of the sick in his time was all-powerful;