Medicine

The wide provenance of PRONI's holdings ensure that there is a vast range of material available relating to the subject of medicine.

These range from asylum records which include information about individuals who were diagnosed as being insane in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries to more light-hearted reminiscences about subjects such as changes in transport for country doctors: 'When he had a horse he came home at 10 o'clock at night dead tired out - as was the horse for he had a very large district. Now he travelled 50 miles in his motor car and was home at 5 o'clock without being tired'.

Of particular interest is a moving letter from Florence Nightingale to Lord Dufferin, 27 Feb. 1889, commenting upon medical conditions in India.

Other records in PRONI's possession relating to medical subjects overseas include letters from the renowned Irish physician, Dr Robert MacDonald, to his mother while he was serving as a surgeon during the Crimean War.