In this blog post, Hannah Kempel, a student on UCD's MA in History of Welfare & Medicine in Society, reflects on her personal responses to archival material relating to Dr Neil John Blayney (1874-1919) donated to the Royal College of Physicians of Ireland's Heritage Centre. There’s a certain intimacy to archival documents, one that I’m not sure that I fully grasped before taking up this project. I had never really interacted with archival documents as part of a collection before. What little experience I had was in individual documents, either provided to me by professors or in ..read more

In this blog post, Fiona Slevin, a PhD candidate at UCD's School of History, explores the career of Dr Thomas Mills ([1773]-1830) using archival material donated to the Royal College of Physicians of Ireland's Heritage Centre. In the late summer of 1830, Dr Thomas Mills of Dublin travelled to Paris with his wife Augusta and sister Kitty. Despite concerns about Thomas’ health, the trio enjoyed a stimulating time meeting friends and seeing the sites of Paris. They stayed at the centrally-located Hôtel des Îsles Britanniques, beside Place Vendôme and Jardin des Tuileries, and the two women e ..read more

In this blog post, Simone Doyle, a student on UCD's MA in History of Welfare & Medicine in Society, explores the career of Dr Neil John Blayney (1874-1919) using archival material donated to the Royal College of Physicians of Ireland's Heritage Centre. Doctors in Obscurity Several notable figures tend to dominate our discussions of doctors in the past – Hippocrates, Joseph Lister, Louis Pasteur, John Snow. In Ireland, Francis Rynd (inventor of the hypodermic syringe), and fellow Wexford man, Arthur Leared (inventor of the binaural stethoscope), are arguably our most famous medical men. But ..read more

In this blog post, Dr Claas Kirchhelle, Lecturer of the History of Medicine at University College Dublin (Wellcome Trust University Award) and Fellow of the Oxford Martin School, urges medical historians to critically reflect on the implications of the COVID-19 pandemic for their field. Trying to make sense of COVID-19 is to look through a kaleidoscope. Within its brief existence, the virus has revealed the incredible complexity of interspecies relationships, economic interdependencies, health system designs, international relations, the many fallouts of the climate emergency, and differing ..read more

In this blog post, we introduce UCD’s MA in the History of Welfare and Medicine in Society and look back at the work and achievements of some former students. MA in the History of Welfare and Medicine in Society Academic Year 2020/2021 Graduate Taught (level 9 nfq, credits 90) Medicine, illness and welfare occupy a central place in all our lives. The MA in the History of Welfare and Medicine in Society is designed to enable you to understand the place of medicine and welfare in society and history (c.1750-1980) and engage with critical debates through various media including film ..read more

In the second instalment of this two-part special, Dr Alice Mauger, Wellcome Trust Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the UCD Centre for the History of Medicine in Ireland explores the changing approaches of medical practitioners and psychiatrists to problem drinking in Ireland since 1922. Read Part I here. After the First World War, medical interest in the “drink question” began to wane and political barometers swung strongly towards attempts to limit drinking. Among the most infamous of these tactics was the United States’ prohibition experiment, which resulted in a nationwide ban on dr ..read more

In this blog post, Natalie Baldwin, a graduate of UCD's MA in History of Welfare & Medicine in Society, explores the realities of training as a medical professional, past and present. Today, when we think of a medical doctor, it is easy to imagine an intelligent, respected, hard-working and well paid members of society who enjoys a high social status. It is therefore tempting to assume this has always been the case, that a career in medicine has always been both socially and financially rewarding. It may be surprising, then, to learn of the ups and downs medical students and their fami ..read more

In this blog post, Annika Liger, a graduate of UCD's MA in History of Welfare & Medicine in Society, reveals anxieties around the medical care of prisoners in the late nineteenth century by examining newspaper coverage of inquests into convict deaths in Mountjoy prison. “Death of a Convict in Mountjoy Prison”, Evening Telegraph  (1 October 1895). With thanks to the British Newspaper Archive. Following a convict’s death, nationalist journalist Alexander Sullivan wrote to the city coroner saying, ‘you cannot be unaware that Mountjoy prison lies under public suspicion as to the medica ..read more

In the first of this two-part series, Dr Alice Mauger, Wellcome Trust Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Centre for the History of Medicine in Ireland, UCD, looks at the changing approaches of medical practitioners and psychiatrists to problem drinking in Ireland at the turn of the twentieth century. After over 1,000 days of debate, in October 2018, the Irish government passed the Public Health (Alcohol) Bill. The Act will introduce minimum unit pricing as well as rigorous regulations surrounding advertising, sponsorship, sale and supply. Under this legislation, Ireland may become the first ..read more

In this month's blog post Dr Lynsey Black, Lecturer in Criminology, Department of Law, Maynooth University, considers the legal and historical context of abortion and symphysiotomy in Ireland. Law and Gender in Modern IrelandLynsey Black and Peter Dunne (eds.), Law and Gender in Modern Ireland: Critique  and Reform (Hart Publishing, 2019We are currently in the midst of a ‘Decade of Centenaries’ in Ireland. For anyone working broadly in the field of gender, it is also clear that we have lived through a decade of reckoning. As editors of the recently published Law and Gender inModern Ireland ..read more