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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