Overview

Ireland’s Hidden Medicine traces the path and fortunes of Irish indigenous medicine from the legendary god of medicine, Déin Chécht, to today.  Unlike the great scribal medical traditions, Ireland’s indigenous medicine is based on medical knowledge passed on orally to each succeeding generation. This journey explores the difference in worldview between biomedicine and indigenous medicine, before it sketches the changing fortunes of this indigenous tradition from the coming of Christianity, through the law tracts and the medical manuscripts of the Middle Ages, to its demise with the fall of the old Gaelic order in the seventeenth century. From there the book examines how some knowledge could have disseminated within the wider community before exploring the factors that influenced its decline in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Irish indigenous medicine is like a diamond hidden in plain sight with its beauty present in the Irish landscape, festivals, and language.  Yet its riches are not realized and it is ignored it to the detriment of health and wellbeing.  Ireland’s Hidden Medicine is an important step in changing this.

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9781913504977

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Rosarie Kingston is a practicing medical herbalist in West Cork, Ireland. She lectures in the department of Folklore and Ethnology at University College, Cork. Her PhD examined Irish vernacular medicine in the twenty first century and she considers this blending of science and tradition paramount to the progression of modern healthcare.

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