In this illuminating social history of medicine and charity in Ireland over almost 150 years from 1718 until just after the Great Famine, Laurence M. Geary shows how illness and poverty reacted upon each other. The poverty resulting from great population growth that continued until the arrival of potato blight in 1845 had a severe effect on the health of the country's population, and the Famine itself caused around one million deaths from starvation and disease. This was a period of great change in medical and charitable services. In the eighteenth century the sick had come to be regarded as the deserving poor, therefore having a better claim to public assistance than those whose poverty was the result of their own dissipation, idleness or vice. A network of charities evolved in Ireland to provide free medical aid to the sick poor. The first voluntary hospital in Dublin opened in 1718 and Geary traces the establishment and development of voluntary hospitals and county infirmaries throughout the country. These had a strong Anglican ethos and bias, but after Catholic emancipation in 1829 the nepotism, sectarianism and divisive politics that were rife in these organisations came under increasing scrutiny. Medical practitioners saw considerable progress in the development of a regulated profession. Geary describes developments in policy making and legislation, culminating in the 1851 Medical Charities Act, which he describes as part of a process that characterised the century and more under review in this book: the unrelenting pressure on philanthropy and private medical charity and the inexorable shift from voluntarism to an embryonic system of state medicine.

In this illuminating social history of medicine and charity in Ireland over almost 150 years from 1718 until just after the Great Famine, Laurence M. Geary shows how illness and poverty reacted upon each other. The poverty resulting from great population growth that continued until the arrival of potato blight in 1845 had a severe effect on the health of the country's population, and the Famine itself caused around one million deaths from starvation and disease. This was a period of great change in medical and charitable services. In the eighteenth century the sick had come to be regarded as the deserving poor, therefore having a better claim to public assistance than those whose poverty was the result of their own dissipation, idleness or vice. A network of charities evolved in Ireland to provide free medical aid to the sick poor. The first voluntary hospital in Dublin opened in 1718 and Geary traces the establishment and development of voluntary hospitals and county infirmaries throughout the country. These had a strong Anglican ethos and bias, but after Catholic emancipation in 1829 the nepotism, sectarianism and divisive politics that were rife in these organisations came under increasing scrutiny. Medical practitioners saw considerable progress in the development of a regulated profession. Geary describes developments in policy making and legislation, culminating in the 1851 Medical Charities Act, which he describes as part of a process that characterised the century and more under review in this book: the unrelenting pressure on philanthropy and private medical charity and the inexorable shift from voluntarism to an embryonic system of state medicine.

Interest in nineteenth-century studies has never been greater, and contrasts sharply with previous neglect of many aspects of that century's history and culture. These essays by leading scholars assess and interpret developments from 1990 onwards in the field of nineteenth-century Irish studies, and from a wide range of disciplinary perspectives. The book covers political, social, religious and women's history and historical geography as well as anthropological and sociological studies of nineteenth-century Ireland. Further chapters cover nineteenth-century music, art history, literature in English, Gaelic culture and language and the Irish diaspora. This will be an invaluable research tool and reference book for many years to come.

Contents of this volume, the fifth in a series focusing on 19th-century Ireland include: 'The Irish password is no longer repeal but revolution': a German view of Ireland's 1848: Brigitte Anton; Revolution from the bottom up: street balladry and memory: Maura Cronin; Sectarianism in 1798 and in Catholic nationalist memory: James S. Donnelly, Jr; Resistance and rebellion in the Gaelic literary tradition from 1798 to 1848: Tom Dunne; Voicing rebellion in Victorian fiction: Nell McCaw; 'New light' Ulster Presbyterianism and the nationalist rhetoric of John Mitchel: Robert Mahony; The nationalist monuments at Cork and Skibbereen: Orlaith Mannion; The United Irish threat to early colonial Australia: Ruan O'Donnell; Presence and absence of Wolfe Tone during the centenary commemoration of the 1798 rebellion: Sophie Ollivier; Three narratives of rural insurgency post-1798: Tadgh O'Sullivan; Popular mobilisation and the rising of 1848: the clubs of the Irish Confederation: Gary Owens; Representations of Irish history in fiction films made prior to the 1916 Rising: Kevin Rockett; Young Ireland and the 1798 rebellion: Sean Ryder; The sepulchral nationalism of the Australasian 1798 commemoration: J. Wooding.