ANCIENT IRISH MEDICINE 
Irish then provided an opportunity for the race to 
have its geniuses born. A great many of the most 
a : y . 
distinguished men of the world’s history have been 
born after the fifth in the family, some of them in- 
deed as late as the twelfth to the fifteenth. In our 
generation if there is anything in this rule, and 
there seems to be very good reason to think so, we 
are to a great extent missing the geniuses of the 
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race, because of the smallness of the families.”** 
* Dr. More Madden called attention to the fact that some of the Irish 
medical documents that we have indicate that the old Irish were 
acquainted with anaesthesia for surgical purposes, that is the induction 
of narcosis in order that surgical operations might be performed pain- 
lessly. In a Celtic materia medica, that is work on various drug materials 
used in medicine and surgery written in the twelfth century, there is a 
reference te a compound containing mandrake and other materials which 
was to be used ‘‘before cuttings and punctures in order that there might 
not be pain with them.’’ ‘‘By means of this it is possible for anyone to 
secure sleep by just smelling it.”’ 
In proof of the antiquity of the use of anaesthetics in the Irish monastic 
tradition, Dr. More Madden quoted a passage from Jocelyn’s life of 
Kentigern or St. Mungo, patron of Glasgow, a book written in the twelfth 
century probably during the last quarter or sometime between 1185 and 
1199. This life which is edited from the unique manuscript in the 
British Museum Cott. vat. ¢. viii, of the twelfth century, was written by 
the celebrated Jocelyn of Furness, the biographer of St. Patrick, and is 
dedicated to another Jocelyn, bishop of Glasgow. That passage runs, 
‘It is perfectly clear to us that many having taken the drink of oblivion 
which physicians call the lethargion, have as a result gone to sleep; inci- 
sions in their members and at times cauterizations even in their most 
vital parts or abrasions have occurred without their feeling them in the 
least. After they were awaked from their sleep they were entirely igno- 
rant of the fact that anything had been done to them.’’ In the original 
medieval Latin the passage runs: “Constat nihilominus nobis multos, sumptu 
potu oblivionis quem physici lethargion vocant obdormire; et in membris 
incisionem, et aliquotiens adustionem et in vitalibus, abrasionem perpessos, 
minime sensisse, et post somni excussionem, quae erga sese actilata fuerant 
ionorasse.’’ 
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