Corpus of Electronic Texts Edition
An Irish Materia Medica (Author: Tadhg Ó Cuinn)
subsection 8
In General
This Materia Medica is of a high standard. At a rough check, it appears that, of the 208 plant simples and 29 plant products discussed, some two thirds are mentioned in the 12th edition of the Pharmacognosy of Trease and Evans as being relevant still or until recently, and another 15 were and are of nutritional value. That the author discusses only those drugs which he knew to be in use, is indicated by the drugs which are discussed in the Erlangen copy of Circa Instans, but which are not referred to in the Irish version. Of the 38 such drugs, 33 are foreign and obviously hard to come by, and only five are plants that occur in the Irish flora. The author was
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practical, too, in selecting information from his sources, He seems to give only those uses of the drug which he knew to be made in practice in this country. To mention an obvious case, he omits the numerous references to scorpion stings which occur in the Latin texts. On the other hand, he frequently mentions the mad dog when the Latin source does not.
The text appears to be no slavish rendering of the voice of ancient authority, but a sensible selection of information believed to be of practical use. It indicates the ailments that were known in the country at the time, and the drugs that were used in treating them.
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Copies of the text
The version given in the present exercise is based on the copy of the text in Trinity College Dublin, manuscript No. 1343 (H. 3. 22), pages 47–106. The scribe was Aodh Buidhe Ó Leighin, and the copy is believed to have been made in the fifteenth century. I have made a few emendations from other copies, indicated by square brackets [ ], but I have not as yet compared or collated the text with the other copies.Other copies of the text are contained in a number of manuscripts: