A Portrait of Irish Medicine. Dublin: Ward River Press, 1984. Limited Edition Issue. Specially bound by Antiquarian Bookcrafts in full dark red morocco. Coat of arms of the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland in gilt on upper cover; Spine embossed with off-white bars on the red morocco background symbolising the barber’s pole, the emblem of the Barber-Surgeons Guild in which surgeons were once incorporated together with barbers. Red and white endbands, water-silk endpapers. A fine bright copy.

Limited Edition of 250 copies only. Limitation leaf signed by the President R.C.S.I., Eoin O’Brien, Anne Crookshank, Liam Miller, Joe Kelly, Des Breen and Gordon Wolstenholme.

A beautifully published edition. Beginning in legendary times it moves on through the Brehon Laws and the post-Patrician era of monastic medicine, to the turbulent 17th and 18th centuries which saw the first glimmerings of organised medicine.