“In the household of every great lord in Ireland there is a physician who has a tract of land for his support, and who is appointed to his post, not on account of the great amount of learning he brings away in his head from colleges, but because he is able to cure diseases. His knowledge of the healing art is derived from books left him by his forefathers, which describe very exactly the marks and signs by which the various diseases are known, and lay down the proper remedies for each. These remedies [which are mostly herbs], are all produced in that country. Accordingly, the Irish people are much better managed in sickness than the Italians, who have a physician in every village.” The Irish physicians carefully studied all the diseases known in their time, and had names for them--names belonging to the Irish language, and not borrowed from other countries or other languages. They investigated and noted down the qualities and effects of all curative herbs (which had Gaelic, as well as Latin, names); and they were accordingly well known throughout Europe for their knowledge and skill in medicinal botany. There were Hospitals all over the country, some in connexion with monasteries, and managed by monks, some under the lay authorities; and one or more doctors with skilled nurses attended each hospital, whether lay or monastic. The Brehon Law laid down regulations for the lay hospitals:--for instance, that they should be kept clean, and should have four open doors for ventilation, that a stream of clear water should run across the house through the middle of the floor, that the patients should not be put into beds forbidden by the physician, that noisy talkative persons should be kept away from them; and many other such like. There were no such regulations for the monastic hospitals, as being unnecessary. The provision about the open doors and the stream of water may be said to have anticipated by more than a thousand years the present open-air treatment of consumption. Those who had means were expected to pay for food, medicine, physician, and attendance: but the poor were received and treated free. If a person wounded or injured another unlawfully, he was obliged to pay for “sick maintenance,” _i.e._, the cost of maintaining the wounded person in a hospital till recovery or death; which payment included the fees of the physician and of one or more nurses. It is pleasant to know that the Irish physicians of our time, who, it is generally agreed, are equal to those of any other country in the world, can look back with respect, and not without some feeling of pride, to their Irish predecessors of the times of old. CHAPTER XIV. HOW THEY BUILT AND ARRANGED THEIR HOUSES.