The medical profession and the exercise of power in early nineteenth-century Cork

Neil Cronin

‘The role of local history in informing our understanding of the national story and making regional and chronological comparisons has increasingly been recognised. The Maynooth Studies in Local History have played an important role in this, publishing short works of consistently high levels of scholarship … Neil Cronin’s study move[s] beyond its immediate subject matter to provide broader insights into nineteenth century Irish society … it is also a source of fascinating detail for the history of medicine’, Fionnuala Walsh, Family & Community History (October 2015).

‘This volume is a welcome addition to the corpus of literature about the history of medicine in Ireland and Cork in particular’, Margaret Lantry, Journal of the Cork Historical & Archaeological Society (2015).

‘The Maynooth Studies in Local History series has now published 116 titles … These studies may be compact, but they are researched, written and edited to the highest standards. Neil Cronin’s work is no exception. Cronin has used a spat between surgeons in early 19th-century Cork to illustrated larger themes of sectarian privilege, economic advantage and social status in the late Georgian era when Catholic disadvantage was beginning to crumble … The author doe set the scene admirably’, Ian D'Alton, The Irish Catholic (November 2014). 

‘The Maynooth Studies in Local History are one of the most significant publishing achievements in Irish History in the past quarter century … they are a triumphant demonstration of the value of the local approach [and] are illustrative, individually and severally, of the exemplary potential of the micro-study, and of the illuminative and illustrative quality of an approach that not just accommodates but provides a raison d’etre for a form of history that celebrates the diversity that underlies every generalisation that historians aspire to reach’, James Kelly, Studia Hibernica (2014).


‘The Maynooth Studies in Local History have brought about a quiet revolution in Irish local studies, and have changed the larger landscape too. Working from fascinating and little-known sources, and mobilizing the resources of energetic and imaginative scholarship, an extraordinary range of subjects has been identified, illuminated and brought into focus. These 100 publications not only explore little known local episodes and phenomena; they constitute a major contribution to the mainstream of Irish history’, R.F. Foster, historian.