Medicine, illness and disease in the lordship of Ireland, 1177 to 1541 A.D.

Abstract

The lordship of Ireland existed for 364 years from 1177 to 1541. Inhabited mostly by the English-of-Ireland, its medical infrastructure resembled contemporary England rather than Gaelic Ireland. The medical marketplace comprised physicians, surgeons, barber-surgeons, apothecaries and midwives, some organised into societies and guilds. Monastic infirmaries and hospitals, including leper hospitals, provided institutional care. Medical practice was rooted in classical medicine and the few Hiberno-English medical texts that survive attest to the use of bleeding, herbs and charms as treatments. Among many ailments leprosy was common, but the arrival of the Black Death bubonic plague pandemic of 1348 decimated the population of the lordship and contributed to its eventual decline. Using historical, archaeological and literary sources this paper analyses the experience of medicine, illness and disease among the people of the lordship of Ireland from the twelfth to the sixteenth centuries.