“Why, certainly, Jug,” said I, “it would be rather bad treatment if we had no cures in the country.”
“Ough! that saying is like your dear father,” said she, “and your grandfather before you, and your great-grandfather who was before him agin. Moreover,” pursued Jug, “God planted our cures in the fields because there was no pothecaries.”
“Very true, Jug,” said I.
“Well, then, Master Jonah,” resumed she, “if God or the Virgin, and I’m sure I can’t say which of them, planted the cures, sure they must have made people who knew how to pick them up in the fields, or what good is their growing there?”
“There’s no gainsaying that, Jug,” gravely observed I.
“Well, then, it was to the colloughs, sure enough, God gave the knowledge of picking the cures up—because he knew well that they were owld and helpless, and that it would be a charity to employ them. When once they learned the herbs, they were welcome every where; and there was not one man died in his bed (the people say) in owld times for twenty now-a-days.”
“Of that there is no doubt, Jug,” said I, “though there may be other reasons for it.”
“Ough! God bless you agin, avourneen! any how,” said Jug. “Well, then, they say it was Crummell and his troopers, bad luck to their sowls, the murdering villains! that brought the first farriers (and no better luck to them!) to Ireland, and the colloughs were kilt with the hunger. The craturs, as the owld people tell, eat grass like the beasts when the cows were all kilt by the troopers and farriers—avourneen, avourneen!”
Modern practitioners will perceive, by these two specimens of our ancient doctors, that the state of medicine in Ireland was totally different from that in Italy. Surgery being likewise a branch of the healing art, no doubt also differed in the two countries, in a similar degree. I shall therefore give a few instances of both medico-surgical and surgico-medical practice fifty years ago in Ireland; and if my talented friend, Lady Morgan, will be so good as to inquire, she will find, that though she has left medicine so entirely to her lord, she may get an admirable doctor or two to introduce into her next Irish imaginations—which I hope will be soon forthcoming—certainly not sooner than agreeable and welcome.
I must here notice a revolution; namely, that of late, since farriers have got a “step in the peerage,” and are made commissioned officers in the army, they think it proper to refine their pharmacopeia so as to render it more congenial to their new rank and station, and some horses are now not only theoretically but practically placed on more than a level with the persons who mount them.