{"title":"Medieval Irish medical verse in the nineteenth century: some evidence from material culture","authors":"D. Hayden","doi":"10.1017/ihs.2021.50","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/ihs.2021.50","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This article presents an edition and translation of an Irish didactic poem found in a large compilation of remedies, charms and prayers that was written in the early sixteenth century by the Roscommon medical scribe Conla Mac an Leagha. The contents of this poem, and of the treatise in which it occurs more generally, are of inherent interest for our understanding of the history of medical learning in medieval Ireland. However, the poem is also of particular significance due to the fact that its penultimate stanza, which invokes the authority of one ‘Colmán mac Oililla’, is attested in two much later sources that provide insight into the transmission and reception of medieval Irish medical texts in the early nineteenth century, as well as into the relationship between manuscript, print and material culture during that period. The two sources in question, one of which is a previously unprovenanced signboard now kept in the Wellcome Collection in London, can both be connected with the work of the Munster ‘herb doctor’ Michael Casey (1752?–1830/31), who in 1825 advertised the publication of a new herbal containing cures derived from much earlier Irish-language medical manuscripts.","PeriodicalId":44187,"journal":{"name":"IRISH HISTORICAL STUDIES","volume":"45 1","pages":"159 - 177"},"PeriodicalIF":1.4,"publicationDate":"2021-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48333891","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The darkness echoing: exploring Ireland's places of famine, death and rebellion. By Gillian O'Brien. Pp 373. Dublin: Doubleday Ireland. 2020. €21 paperback.","authors":"Sinéad McCoole","doi":"10.1017/ihs.2021.49","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/ihs.2021.49","url":null,"abstract":"action on health reform could be viewed as radical, progressive and independent. Ireland in consequence was ahead of Britain and much of Europe in the enactment of childhood immunisation schemes. Despite this stance, it took years for a successful immunisation scheme in Ireland to be implemented. Dwyer chronicles the initiatives undertaken and reveals the many factors which helped or held back the development of immunisation in Ireland. These included obstruction by some from the wider medical community. He explores the different experiences of the major cities of Cork and Dublin and the different levels of success in implementing an immunisation programme. Explaining howmuch relied on the actions and motivation of the supervising medical officer as to whether there was successful uptake of the programme. Other problems had significant impacts such as the ill-fated Ring College incident, during which twenty-four children reportedly contracted tuberculosis and one twelve-year-old girl died following routine anti-diphtheria immunisation. Dwyer provides new evidencewhich suggests that liability lay with the local attending doctor and his advisors rather than with BurroughsWellcomewhere previous historiography has assigned the blame. Dwyer spends some time discussing the Burroughs Wellcome vaccine trials in Ireland held during the mid twentieth century. He reveals the more problematic aspects of the push to find and introduce an effective anti-diphtheria immunisation. He discloses how the rights of vulnerable children in institutional care were clearly side-lined. The scandal first came to light during the 1990s, but this study by Dwyer reveals the much wider prevalence of the practice by the company than previously thought. Furthermore, the available evidence suggests parents and guardians of children involved in trials were kept in the dark about the potentially lethal nature of the vaccines administered to the children. Dwyer points out that while the religious congregations behind these institutions have received considerable attention much less has been focused on the scientific andmedical communities behind the trials. In his opinion further investigation should focus on these communities and their actions. Dwyer also raises important questions around the ethical practices of those involved, who chose to carry out the trials on Irish children as British legislation prevented them from doing so on children in Britain. He queries why those involved deemed the children in Irish institutions as lesser beings and not offered the same protections as their British counterparts. His work fits more widely into the growing interest in recent years in uncovering institutional abuse of children in Ireland. Various reports have been published in recent years ― such as Ryan (2009), Ferns (2005) and Murphy (2009) ― which have revealed the wide extent of child abuse historically within Irish institutions. Dwyer’s book provides a well-written, thorough and thou","PeriodicalId":44187,"journal":{"name":"IRISH HISTORICAL STUDIES","volume":"45 1","pages":"356 - 358"},"PeriodicalIF":1.4,"publicationDate":"2021-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46923769","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Violent loyalties: manliness, migration and the Irish in the Canadas, 1798–1841. By Jane G. V. McGaughey. Pp 256. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press. 2020. £80 hardback.","authors":"Kyle R Hughes","doi":"10.1017/ihs.2021.36","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/ihs.2021.36","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":44187,"journal":{"name":"IRISH HISTORICAL STUDIES","volume":"45 1","pages":"339 - 340"},"PeriodicalIF":1.4,"publicationDate":"2021-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45830463","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Crowds and political violence in early modern Ireland: Galway and the 1641 depositions","authors":"J. Walter","doi":"10.1017/ihs.2021.51","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/ihs.2021.51","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This article offers a critical analysis of the representation of early modern popular violence provided by the 1641 depositions. Exploring the problems of how reported ‘speech’ was produced and recorded in the 1641 depositions, the article challenges the tendency within the depositions to represent violence as a spontaneous and immediate act, explicable by a racialised reading of Irish ‘barbarity’ and Catholic treachery. Exploiting a large cache of depositions and examinations in the relatively resource-rich urban context of Galway, it offers a micro-historical narrative of two brutal episodes of popular violence there in 1642 to reveal the complex histories and politics that might lie behind acts of violence in the Irish rising. Examining the local impact of the state's policies of anglicisation and Protestantisation, the paper recovers the prolonged, but ultimately unsuccessful, negotiations that preceded popular violence. Contextualizing the episodes, the article locates that violence in the more complex (and divided) politics of the city and in the radical challenges it brought to traditional structures of rule in Galway. Referencing the developing body of work on the politics of early modern crowd actions in Ireland, the article argues that the popular violence was political, both a consequence of and contributor to political change there.","PeriodicalId":44187,"journal":{"name":"IRISH HISTORICAL STUDIES","volume":"45 1","pages":"178 - 202"},"PeriodicalIF":1.4,"publicationDate":"2021-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46796612","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Caoimhe Nic Dháibhéid, Shahmima Akhtar, D. Hassett, K. Kenny, L. McAtackney, I. McBride, Timothy G. McMahon, J. Ohlmeyer
{"title":"Round table: Decolonising Irish history? Possibilities, challenges, practices","authors":"Caoimhe Nic Dháibhéid, Shahmima Akhtar, D. Hassett, K. Kenny, L. McAtackney, I. McBride, Timothy G. McMahon, J. Ohlmeyer","doi":"10.1017/ihs.2021.57","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/ihs.2021.57","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract The nature of Ireland's place within the British Empire continues to attract significant public and scholarly attention. While historians of Ireland have long accepted the complexity of Ireland's imperial past as both colonised and coloniser, the broader public debate has grown more heated in recent months, buffeted by Brexit, the Decade of Centenaries and global events. At the same time, the imperatives of social movements such as Black Lives Matter and Decolonising the Curriculum have asked us to reflect on the assumptions, hierarchies and norms underpinning the structures of society, including the production of knowledge and the higher education system. This round table brings together scholars from diverse disciplinary and methodological backgrounds to examine the prospects, possibilities and challenges of what decolonising Irish history might mean for our field. It sets these discussions within broader frameworks, considering both the relationship of Irish historical writing to postcolonial theory and the developments in the latter field in the last twenty years. It also reflects on the sociology of our discipline and makes suggestions for future research agendas.","PeriodicalId":44187,"journal":{"name":"IRISH HISTORICAL STUDIES","volume":"45 1","pages":"303 - 332"},"PeriodicalIF":1.4,"publicationDate":"2021-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48587124","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Snapshot stories: visuality, photography, and the social history of Ireland, 1922–2000. By Erika Hanna. Pp 288. Oxford University Press. 2020. £60 hardback.","authors":"L. Godson","doi":"10.1017/ihs.2021.47","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/ihs.2021.47","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":44187,"journal":{"name":"IRISH HISTORICAL STUDIES","volume":"45 1","pages":"354 - 355"},"PeriodicalIF":1.4,"publicationDate":"2021-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44504302","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The unstoppable Irish: songs and integration of the New York Irish, 1783–1883. By Dan Milner. Pp 294. South Bend, IN: University of Notre Dame Press. 2019. $40 hardback.","authors":"D. Shiels","doi":"10.1017/ihs.2021.38","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/ihs.2021.38","url":null,"abstract":"many of what Brundage terms the ‘ongoing work of political imagination and discursive invention’ that was central to advancing Irish nationalist ideas (p. 5). Arranged chronologically, the book journeys from the Tones and the exiles of 1798 through to the Good Friday Agreement at the close of the twentieth century. Each chapter succinctly contextualises events in America by providing a backdrop of the political developments in Ireland. The adoption of such a broad timeframe allows Brundage to demonstrate the changing nature of Irish American nationalism, which was in a regular state of flux. Physical force and constitutional nationalists both enjoyed their moments in the sun, just as both experienced stretches in the doldrums. Throughout they had to contend with the constant evolution of Irish America itself. The religious, social and political diasporic world encountered by the United Irish exiles of the early 1800s was a very different place to the one found by the Young Irelanders of the 1850s, or the anti-treaty republicans of the 1920s. The author also finds variance and complexity in the nationalist ideals espoused throughout his study period. While some embraced a radical republican vision, others were more conservative, aspiring towards more moderate change. Equally there were those who advocated for a secular nationalism, just as there were those who desired to see Catholicism at the heart of any independent Ireland. And while some confined themselves solely to the cause of Ireland, there were others for whom nationalism was but one component of a wider struggle for transnational social and political change. A particularly refreshing aspect of Brundage’s work is his effort to explore the track record of Irish nationalists on the inclusion (and exclusion) of women, and their position on issues such as women’s suffrage. Again, here he encounters much contrast. Writing in 1915, Mary J. O’Donovan Rossa— who supported the right to vote— opined that within Clan na Gael women ‘must be absolutely under obedience to the authorised men and takewilling guidance from them’ (p.139). Meanwhile, others, such as the nationalists of the United Irish League of America, were welcoming women to leading positions within their organisation at a time when only one Irish United Irish League branch was admitting them to membership. Brundage provides similar insights into nationalist interactions with labour activism and racial inequality, issues which (along with political engagement) serve to illustrate how life in America could influence Irish nationalists and how they, in turn, influenced America. Among the former were men like Denis Driscol, the anti-slavery United Irishman who in the United States published offers of reward for runaways and defended the often-extreme punishments inflicted upon the enslaved. Among the latter were those like anti-treaty I.R.A. veteran Mike Quill, who in 1934 was elected president of the 30,000 strong Transport Workers’Union a","PeriodicalId":44187,"journal":{"name":"IRISH HISTORICAL STUDIES","volume":"45 1","pages":"341 - 343"},"PeriodicalIF":1.4,"publicationDate":"2021-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"56644160","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Queer Belfast during the First World War: masculinity and same-sex desire in the Irish city","authors":"T. Hulme","doi":"10.1017/ihs.2021.54","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/ihs.2021.54","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Queer history is still in its infancy in Ireland, with political approaches and the more recent past, and the gay rights movement particularly, providing the primary focus so far. This article takes a different approach by investigating the everyday experiences, identities and policing of men who had sex with men in the early twentieth century. Using two extraordinary case studies from Belfast during the First World War, I explore different lives ― from youth to adulthood, sexual encounter to arrest, and trial to life afterwards. I argue that queer culture in Belfast shared aspects with other western metropolises, particularly in terms of urban cruising, payment for sex and relationships structured by class. Public responses too, from newspaper to courtroom, were articulated through transnational formulations of respectability and masculinity. At the same time, however, Belfast's queer men were shaped by their movement within a peculiarly Irish network of places, both in and beyond the country's borders. Religious and political structures specific to Ulster also affected how such men fared in the legal system and in their lives following their trials. By detailing both the similarities yet divergences of queer experience in Belfast, I thus aim to raise a new agenda for studying male sexuality in the north of Ireland.","PeriodicalId":44187,"journal":{"name":"IRISH HISTORICAL STUDIES","volume":"45 1","pages":"239 - 261"},"PeriodicalIF":1.4,"publicationDate":"2021-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45919365","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}