Corpus of Electronic Texts Edition
An Irish Materia Medica (Author: Tadhg Ó Cuinn)
subsection 2
AQUA VITAE
In the Trinity College manuscript, H. 3. 22, immediately after our Materia medica, there occurs a longish essay on the medical uses of aqua vitae, or distilled alcohol, written by the same scribe who wrote
p.57
the Materia medica, Aodh Buidhe Ó Leighin (Ó Concheanainn, 1976).
This essay has already been printed, together with the Latin texts on which it was based, and the background to the work (Ó Conchubhair, 1990), and it is included here at the end of the text of the Materia medica, as was done by Ó Leighin. It is possible that the author of the essay was Tadhg Ó Cuinn himself, and that he added it to the Materia medica for the sake of completeness.
The distillation of alcohol was still in its early stages in this country in Tadhg Ó Cuinn's time, and it is unlikely that the making of a good whiskey from malted barley and other cereals was achieved until somewhat later in the 15th century.