The Pharmaceutical
Journal Vol 266 No 7152 p815-820
June 16, 2001
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The Pharmaceutical
Journal Vol 266 No 7152 p815-820 |
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RPM |
OnlookerSamuel Johnson, Gaelic and pharmacyFrom Mr F. M. Hickey, MRPharmS As ever, “Onlooker” has interesting things to say, this time on political correctness (PJ, June 9, p768). It is unlikely, however, that he would have been able to draw his claymore in protest against Samuel Johnson’s remarks about Gaelic. The British Government had been actively “disarming” the Scottish Highlands for years. If he still had such a weapon it would have had to be retrieved from its traditional hiding place in the thatched roof of his cottage, assuming that his cottage still had a roof left following the attention of the British Army. Dr Johnson’s remark was made at a time when merely wearing tartan (unless employed by the British Army) was punishable by transportation to “any of His Majesty’s plantations beyond the seas, there to remain for the space of seven years”, under the infamous Act of Proscription that was extant from 1747 to 1782. Official and popular prejudice still exists against Gaelic, which was once the language of all Scotland. Children of my grandparents’ generation were beaten for speaking it at school. It is only in recent years that the state has permitted it within schools. And its relevance to pharmacy? The “History of Scottish medicine” by John D. Comrie (Wellcome Historical Museum, 1932) highlights many Gaelic medical manuscripts, the earliest dated being from 1403 but some probably older. These are in keeping with contemporary practice and include excerpts from Galen and Avicenna, familiar to us from our own Society’s coat of arms. If Dr Johnson had been unwell on his tour of the Highlands and Islands, it is likely that the medical man treating him would have done his thinking in Gaelic, but expressed himself, for his patient’s benefit, in the international language of medicine and prostitution, English. Findlay Hickley |
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