Before the Doctor Came
Historic Hibernia
What did medicine look like in Gaelic and Norman Ireland? The Brehon laws set out who was owed care when they were injured, who was obliged to provide it, and what it should cost. Hereditary medical families held land in return for their skill, kept great libraries of learning in Irish, and passed the craft from one generation to the next. In monastic infirmaries, in the halls of Norman lords, and at the hearths of ordinary people, the sick were tended by those who had inherited a body of knowledge with roots reaching far beyond Ireland.
This book sets out what that knowledge actually was: how the body was understood, how wounds were dressed and fevers read, how the mad were treated, what was done when plague arrived, and where the learned physician, the herbalist and the wise woman each stood.
From the law tracts to the eve of the modern age, Before the Doctor Came is an account of how a society cared for its sick, long before the doctor as we know them ever came.
€25.00
This title will be available on September 17, 2026.
Seller Bio
Sold by: Historic HiberniaHistoric Hibernia is an independent publisher of popular Irish history.
Alan Cleary and Katherine Colthurst are working tour guides, both born and raised in Co. Kildare, who have spent years showing visitors around Ireland's castles, graveyards and ruins and telling them what actually happened there. They have given talks throughout the country, and now they write history under the Historic Hibernia label.
Alan's subject is the FitzGeralds of Kildare, and above all the 1534 rebellion of Silken Thomas and the siege of Maynooth Castle that broke it. He is also a maritime historian with a long-standing pull towards the great sea disasters, the Titanic chief among them.
Katherine studied for her master's in history at Maynooth University. Her specialist interest is the history of medicine, notably, what people relied on before there were doctors. This became the foundation for her upcoming book Before the Doctor Came.
Between them they aim to write a history that stands up to scrutiny and still reads like a story worth your evening. So far they have written Ireland's Uncrowned Kings, on the FitzGeralds and Maynooth Castle, and Alan's Thomas Andrews.
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