ANCIENT IRISH MEDICINE 
more sophisticated dietary customs of the modern 
time. 
The medieval and modern Irish undoubtedly owed 
not a little of their excellent constitution and 
their remarkable avoidance of inherited defects 
of both mind and body to their thoroughgoing 
submission to the practice of the Church in so far 
as concerns consanguineous marriages. 1he Church 
has always been very strict about the marriage of 
near relatives, but also Church laws have empha- 
sized the desirability of the avoidance of consan- 
guineous marriages even to the fourth degree. The 
Irish followed this precept very closely as a rule 
though there were many temptations to break it for 
there is a very definite clannishness among the Irish. 
Even in this country the older people were rather 
disturbed if a young man married a young Irish 
women from another part of the country than that 
from which his own family had come. There was a 
distinct tendency among them to limit marriages to 
people from the same county or at least to people 
from the same province. Under these circumstances 
it 1s easy to understand that there was constant 
danger of intermarriage within the forbidden de- 
grees. Irish obedience to the Church regulations 
prevented this to the greatest possible extent. 
It used to be thought that the main reason for 
the Church's prohibition of consanguineous mar- 
riages even to the fourth degree was the prevention 
of the moral dangers that are more or less inevitable 
since cousins associate rather intimately. Immoral- 
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