In the first part of this contribution, Síobhra Aiken explores the recent coining of a term for “medical humanities” by the Irish-language terminology committee and reflects on how the decline of indigenous languages contributes to the decoupling of medical practice from its roots in the human experience.
Irish-language scholarship has long engaged with the human aspects of health, illness, and community care (for examples, see Mac Giolla Léith 2012; Ó Murchú 2018; Nic Eoin 2020; McCann 2021; González-Arias 2024). However, the term “daonnachtaí an leighis” (medical humanities) has only recently appeared in criticism (Ó Liatháin and Breathnach 2022). Following the term’s appearance in academic scholarship, “daonnachtaí an leighis” was approved by the official Irish-language terminology committee, an Coiste Téarmaíochta, in February 2024.
The importation of terminology from a mainly Anglo-American academic context raises questions that have long troubled scholars working in minoritised languages. Does the translation and adaptation of a concept like “medical humanities” expand understanding and promote cultural exchange? Or does the imitation of supposedly more advanced approaches from the Anglosphere risk occluding the unique perspectives found in the Irish-language context, while reinforcing a colonial hierarchy of knowledge? Indeed, such imperialistic, “white saviour” undercurrents have come in for particular criticism within first-wave medical humanities (see Whitehead and Woods 2016, 89–90).
The lens of Western medical science indeed obscures indigenous approaches to medical practice that continue, albeit in the margins, across Ireland. The Irish term “leigheas” carries connotations largely absent from the Latin “medicina.” “Leigheas,” from the Old Irish “leiges” of the seventh to ninth centuries, can indicate the curing of illness or the offering of medical treatment. But the term also extends beyond the conventional medical domain into the realm of human relations: it can denote the resolution of a situation (scéal a leigheas), the undoing of injustice (éagóir a leigheas), or the deliverance from sin or misfortune (peacach a leigheas).
If the concept of “medical humanities” was first coined to promote interdisciplinary enquiry into “the human side of medicine” (Evans et al. 2001, 104–5), it could be argued that such a concept is less necessary in an Irish-language context. Understandings of “leigheas” already encompass diverse forms of healing, evoking both physical betterment, and spiritual and community-focused wellbeing. In this sense, traditional medical understandings in Ireland share features identified in other traditional and indigenous settings: the transgenerational transmission of medical knowledge, the influence of the local environment and ecosystems, and the role of the community in supporting individual wellbeing (see Shamna et al. 2022; Dakubo et al. 2020; Rowe et al. 2020). Local healers, who often inherit their knowledge and typically do not charge for their services, continue to practise across Ireland (see Moore 2010). Local knowledge of luibheanna (“herbs; plants”) and orthaí (“charms”) is also widely documented.
Though fragments of this inherited medical understanding remain, much knowledge has been lost due to the rapid decline of the Irish language in the past two hundred years. Whereas the Irish language was spoken by as many as four million people in 1830 (Wolf 2014, 3), the latest census returns highlight that the language is now spoken daily by 71,968 speakers in the Republic of Ireland and is the main home language of some 6,000 speakers in Northern Ireland.
Medicine and linguistic imperialism
In his “Manifesto for a Multilingual Medical Humanities,” Steven Wilson (2023) outlines that more multilingual approaches in the medical humanities can offer a “gateway into critical reflection and cultural understanding.” Yet there exists an inherent conflict between linguistic diversity and the field of medicine. The rise of modern medical science in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries coincided with linguistic homogenisation across Europe, as hundreds of regional vernaculars – what literary scholar Barry McCrea (2015) refers to as the “languages of the night” – collapsed under the influence of major metropolitan languages.
There is a medical subtext to this language decline, as is particularly evident in the case of the Irish language. The famines of the nineteenth century, and associated outbreaks of disease, disproportionately affected poverty-stricken Irish-speaking populations along the western seaboard. Around one million people died from starvation during the “Great Famine” of the 1840s and another million or so emigrated. The socio-economic conditions responsible for these recurrent humanitarian crises were not adequately addressed in emerging medical texts. For example, in the Dublin Journal of Medical Science (1836, 104) the Geneva-based doctor H. C. Lombard referred to typhoid as “the Irish contagious fever” and scapegoated Irish migrants for its spread in Britain. Incidentally, this racialisation of illness was repeated more recently, with Covid-19 being referred to by the then U.S. President Donald Trump and others as the “Chinese virus” (See Reja 2021).
The medical domain not only reinforced ethnic prejudices but also became a strong force of Anglicisation. A survey of the Irish-speaking community of Uíbh Ráthach (Iveragh) in South-West Kerry from the early twentieth century highlights this phenomenon: the report lists the dispensary as one of the only local institutions where Irish was not spoken, let alone accommodated: “Dr Behan knows no Irish + has no interest in it” (Mac Coluim Papers, NLI, MS 24, 393/6). The connection between medicine and the Anglosphere is even hinted at in dialectical variations: the term “easpaicil” – a Gaelicisation, perhaps, of the English “hospital” – is found in certain Irish-speaking areas in Galway over the official term “ospidéal.”
The legacies of colonialism in healthcare
Even though Irish is now an officially recognised language in both jurisdictions on the island (only since 2022 in the case of Northern Ireland), Irish speakers continue to face challenges within the established medical sphere.
The COVID-19 pandemic brought numerous health inequalities to the fore. The Irish government’s Department of Health issued an apology in November 2021 for the poor provision of Irish-language services, the inadequacy of the translations provided, and the repeated violation of language rights as vaccination services were provided through English only. A recent study by Clíodhna Breathnach underscores how family members in Gaeltacht (Irish-speaking) areas are often compelled to serve as unofficial interpreters due to the lack of consistency in Irish-language medical provisions (Breathnach and Hynes 2023).
These linguistic challenges also exist in urban contexts, where the language is experiencing a revival. The Irish-language campaign group An Dream Dearg (the group’s name literally means “the red crowd,” drawing on the Irish expression “dearg le fearg” meaning “red with anger”) recently shared a testimony from a Belfast-based mother who was dismissed by a receptionist in an A&E department when checking in with her sick child: “Will you just give me his name in English, never mind all that Irish” (An Dream Dearg 2024).
Language reclamation and wellbeing
This complicated relationship between Irish speakers and the medical domain was not always the sole reality, however. Deborah Hayden’s (2020) ongoing research on Irish-language medical texts from 1350 to 1700 recovers an overlooked tradition of medical writing that draws on local lore as well as canonical Greek and Latin medical texts and contemporary writings in other languages. Acadamh na Lianna (the academy of Irish-speaking doctors) has operated since 1968, with the aim of promoting the Irish language within the field of medicine (see Ó Sé 2018). Meanwhile, the University of Galway has designed an optional module for medical students, “Teanga an Leighis” (The Language of Medicine), to promote language concordant health services and best practice in patient care (Ní Uigín et al. 2015).
Language has other connections with health and wellbeing, too. There is wide evidence that bilingualism and multilingualism brings cognitive and health benefits, but what of the health benefits of speaking and reclaiming the language of the place you live? Studies of indigenous language reclamation efforts in Australia and North America indicate there are specific health-related benefits in regard to issues such as “suicide, obesity, diabetes, and educational performance” (Whalen et al. 2022). The significant ongoing language revivals – including in predominantly working-class communities in West Belfast and in the previously declining rural community of Carntogher, Co. Derry – already demonstrate notable economic and social benefits, with further studies required to measure these impacts in terms of health and wellbeing (Dr Mel Engman at Queen’s University Belfast is currently investigating this question).
Perspectives from the Irish language suggest, therefore, that many of the tenets of the medical humanities – from narrative medicine to communal support, to culturally shaped medical approaches – are highly relevant within minoritised linguistic contexts, independent of engagement with the field itself. This, in turn, raises the question of why and how the medical and the human experience have been decoupled in dominant Western discourses. Minoritised language viewpoints underscore the linguistic and imperial domination on which modern medicine is founded and offer a reminder that it is not multilingualism that demands our attention. Rather, it is the exceptional state of monolingualism that risks diminishing variations within medical understanding and clouding the centrality of the human experience in healthcare.
About the author
Síobhra Aiken is a senior lecturer in Irish and Celtic Studies at Queen’s University Belfast and a member of the Young Academy Ireland (YAI). She has published widely on various aspects of the social and cultural history of twentieth-century Ireland. Her monograph, Spiritual Wounds: Trauma, Testimony and the Irish Civil War, was awarded the Michael J. Durkan Prize for Books in Language and Culture in 2022 and the Whitfield Prize from the Royal Historical Society in 2023.
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