ANCIENT IRISH MEDICINE 
secure a physician's services for the wounded person 
and pay for the same until cure was effected. 
The Irish thoroughly understood and appreciated 
how necessary it was for a physician to have time 
to pursue his studies. They felt that he ought to 
be to as great an extent as possible, independent of 
the necessity of practising so continually as to be 
deprived of the opportunity of keeping up with the 
progress in medicine that was going on round him. 
This is one of the evils of the present day practice 
of medicine that those who are interested in the 
maintenance of professional prestige are most con- 
cerned with. Those who know conditions in medi- 
cine best are frequently heard to urge busy practi- 
tioners of medicine to give up their practice for a 
time and take a sabbatic period during which they 
may catch up with the progress of medicine. In 
Ireland it was the custom for a tribe or clan to 
make a grant of land to their physician so that, in 
the words of the Brehon code, ‘ he might be pre- 
served from being disturbed by the cares and anxie- 
ties of life and enabled to devote himself not only 
to the work of his profession but also to the study of 
advance in it.” 
At least one of the very old schools founded in 
Ireland, one that in its time was a worthy con- 
temporary of such great schools for academic edu- 
cation as Clonmacnois, Clonard, Cashel, Portumna 
and Armagh, was a medical school. It was as fam- 
ous for its non-medical teaching as for its courses in 
medicine. The Irish were firmly persuaded that a 
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