THE WORLD'S DEBT TO THE IRISH 
made for the maintenance and treatment of the 
patient. 
An extremely interesting feature in Irish medicine 
of the older time is the legislation regulating fees 
paid to physicians. These were graduated not ac- 
cording to the patients’ ailments, but according to 
their ability to pay. For healing a king of some 
serious ailment requiring weeks or perhaps months 
of attendance, a physician had the right to a hun- 
dred cows. For healing a bishop—the good mem- 
bers of the hierarchy were not looked upon as gratis 
patients in those days—the leech was entitled to re- 
ceive forty-two cows, and so downwards through 
various social classes to the ‘‘houseless, homeless 
man, the house boy or slave for whom the leech’s 
fee was reduced to two cows.” * 
Manifestly they thoroughly appreciated the value 
of their services in those days, for I suppose that 
even the smallest fee, two cows and especially two 
Irish cows would be the equivalent of at least $100 
and probably much more than that in our values. 
Attention has been called recently to the fact that 
in the Code of Hammurabi in Babylonia about 2,- 
200 B. C. there is corresponding legislation for the 
regulation of fees according to the rank of the 
patient. This represents the true professional idea 
—that a professional man shall regulate his charges 
[i =iDhs use of cattle to indicate pecuniary values may seem very 
strange and perhaps even a little barbarous to a good many people, but 
it will not if the etymology of that word pecuniary is once recalled. 
Pecunia in Latin means money or cash but originally it meant wealth or 
property of any kind and especially property in cattle. That is the 
meaning of the word pecus from which pecuniary is derived. 
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