During my time volunteering at the RCP, I always kept an eye out for wee slices of home. The archive only has a few books discussing Scottish Gaelic or people connected to the Highlands and Islands. Despite this, I began to see in my growing collection of patriotic snippets a relationship between Gaels and the wider British medical establishment that is both fascinating and highly relevant today. It is fair to say that people from the Highlands and Islands experienced both ends of Britain’s imperial stick; Gaelic speakers could be willing members of British colonialism by profiting from imperial expansion, while, at the same time, many Gaels could experience similar economic, social, and political pressures found in Britain’s overseas territories (Hechter, 1975: 33-4.). This relationship is mirrored in the attitudes and actions of British medical professionals attested in the RCP collection, as we will see. 

That is not to say, though, that there were no wealthy Gaels. Far from it. Historically, many Highlanders enriched themselves through the slave trade and British colonialism (Alston, 2021). The 19th century classical scholar John Stuart Blackie extols the significant role that Highlanders played in maintaining Britian’s imperial state, stating: ‘so many captains of Celtic name had, since then [the Battle of Culloden, 1745], from the rising to the setting sun, defended the boundaries of our broad empire,’ (Blackie, 1876: 5). Furthermore, there has been a growing body of work highlighting how Gaels evicted during the Clearances played a significant role in colonising and suppressing indigenous people throughout Britain’s overseas territories (Alston, 2021). For our current purposes, I want to briefly consider one strand of the Highlands’ complicated colonial past by looking at prominent Gaelic medical families profiting from Britain’s overseas coercive apparatus. 

The RCP collection contains works by several authors in this category. One example is the Gaelic-speaking surgeon George MacKay (1861–1949), who wrote an article in the RCP library entitled ‘Ancient Gaelic medical manuscripts’. Born near Madras in India, he was the son of a Deputy Surgeon General in the East India Company (also George MacKay), who took part in active warfare to secure British rule in Burma (BMJ, 1900 2:1618 (p)). Helen Mackay (1891–1965), the first woman to be elected a fellow at the RCP (and who conducted pioneering research on childhood anaemia), was from a similar background. Born in Inverness, she was the daughter of Duncan MacKay, who worked for the Indian Civil Service in Burma (BMJ, 1965, 2:367(p); Lancet, 1965: 2, 192, 248, 303 (p); Times, 17 July 1965). Both families suggest that elements of the Gaelic medical world were intertwined with the mechanisms of British colonialism and suppression. 

While this is true, Gaelic culture has been (and continues to be) the target of prejudice in some parts of Britain and (especially) in Lowland Scottish circles. In recent times, this has ranged from academic authors describing Gaels as ‘degenerate’ or ‘primitive’ (Ahl, 2007: 180; see more in Turnbull, 1989: 22-5), to mainstream journalists comparing Gaelic speech to animal noises (implying that speakers are less than human) (Burnie, 1991; Brown, 2000, see McEwan-Fujita, 2020: 79-80). Historical Lowland responses to the poverty of some regions in the Highlands are also informative. To cut a very long story short, many Gaels in northern Scotland experienced extreme deprivation during the 18th and 19th centuries due to a combination of wider economic changes in Britain and Europe, the potato famine, and unchecked landlordism (McLeod, 2001: 2). The British media often resorted to damaging stereotypes to explain the dire conditions experienced by Gaelic-speaking crofters (Fenyö, 1996: 70). For example, in the 19th  century, the PerthConstitutional (9 July 1845) newspaper stated that Highlanders were starving because of their ‘lazy and indolent habits’, a sentiment echoed by the Spectator (28 June 1845: 11), Glasgow Herald (9 June 1845), and Edinburgh Evening Courant (5 June 1845). 

When looking to contemporary (and near contemporary) medical writers in the RCP collection, we find many elite Scots perpetuating these same stereotypes. One author in Report on Physical Welfare of Mothers and Children, a certain Dr A. Grant MacDonald, says that ‘laziness’ and ‘lack of ambition’ were the main reasons that crofters and cottars in Skye lived in economic deprivation (MacDonald, 1917: 493), a characterisation that clearly mirrors the prejudice of British and Lowland news reports on conditions elsewhere in the Highlands. Likewise, several authors in the same book refer to different aspects of life in Skye and Lewis, especially agriculture, as ‘primitive’ (MacKenzie, 1917: 19; MacDonald, 1917: 492), a description echoing the often-repeated stereotype of Gaelic society being uncivilised. 

Another medical writer represented in the RCP library, however, tapped into far more insidious ideas to justify his scorn towards Gaelic speakers. The notorious 19th-century Edinburgh-born surgeon Robert Knox, of Burke and Hare fame, proved to be a deeply unpleasant figure even outside of his professional association with two of Scotland’s worst serial killers. In The Races of Men, a work which has been (accurately) described as ‘one of the most articulate and lucid statements of racism ever to appear’ (Fenyö, 1996: 58), Knox argued that human affairs could only be understood through race. He claimed that humanity was racially divided between ‘fair’ and ‘dark’ groups, where Saxons were the only true fair people and Africans the worst dark race. Saxons, Knox suggests, were the cleanest, most industrious, and only democratic ethnic group and would eventually exterminate or subjugate every other race (Knox, 1850: 27, 54. See Fenyö, 1996: 58-61). However, he also saw a division between the ‘Lowland Saxon’ and ‘Caledonian Celt’ of the Highlands and Islands (Knox, 1850: 18). As with our previous examples, he describes Gaels as savage and habitually lazy (Knox, 1850: 54-5, 216). Where Knox differs, however, is that he sees these traits as an inherent flaw of the Celtic race. In his own words, describing a Highlander’s reaction to his forced eviction, Knox states: 

[T]he dreamy Celt ... exclaims, at his parting moment from the horrid land of his birth, "We'll maybe return to Lochaber no more." And why should you return, miserable and wretched man, to the dark and filthy hovel you never sought to purify? To the scanty patch of ground on which you vegetated? Is this civilisation? Was it for this that man was created? Chroniclers of events blame your religion: it is your race.

(Knox, 1850: 216)

While it would be tempting to see Knox as a particularly bad apple given his involvement in a high-profile scandal, his racialised arguments fit seamlessly with some British discourses about Gaels (and indeed, about other ethnic groups) at the time. The 19th-century Scottish advocate James Lorimer, in a similar vein to Knox, claimed that the poverty experienced by Gaelic crofters and cottars was due to ‘faults of their race’ (NLS MS 2633 f. 273; MS 2635 f. 11), while journalists for the Times (8 September 1846; 1 October 1846; 7 October 1846) and Spectator (28 June 1845: 11) proposed that starvation in the Highlands and Islands resulted from the inherent lack of industry in Celtic character and was therefore ‘a matter of race’.

In the end, these are only a handful of fragments in the RCP collection illustrating the complex relationship between Gaels and the British medical establishment. What might we find in Gaelic texts themselves, such as the medical manuscripts discussed in George MacKay’s article? Perhaps this is a question for another time.

Euan (Eòghann) Bowman

References:

Ahl, F. 2007. ‘Troy and Memorials of War’. in Troy, from Homer’s Iliad to Hollywood Epic, edited by M. Winkler, 163-185. Malden: Blackwell.

Alston, D. 2021. Slaves and Highlanders: silenced histories of Scotland and the Caribbean, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

Blackie, J. S. 1876. The Language and Literature of the Scottish Highlands, Edinburgh: Edmondston and Douglas.

Brown, A. 2000. ‘A Tongue Lashing from the Gaels’. The Sunday Times, 20 February 2000.

Burnie, J. 1991. ‘The Voice of Today: Bitch Hunt is War on Women’. The Daily Record, 21 May 1991, 19.

Campbell, J. L. 2000. A Very Civil People: Hebridean folk, history and tradition, edited by H. Cheape, Edinburgh: Birlinn Ltd.

Fenyö, K. 1996. ‘'Contempt, Sympathy and Romance': Lowland perceptions of the Highlands and the clearances during the Famine years, 1845-1855’. PhD Thesis. University of Glasgow.

Hetcher, M. Internal Colonialism: the Celtic fringe in British national development, 1536-1966, Los Angeles: University of California Press.

Knox, R. 1850. The Races of Men: a fragment, London: H. Renshaw.

MacDonald, A. G. 1917. ‘Report of Dr A. Grant MacDonald of Parish of Uig, Skye’. in Report on the Physical Welfare of Mothers and Children, edited by L. MacKenzie. Dunfermline: Carnegie United Kingdom Trust.

MacKay, G. 1904. ‘Ancient Gaelic Medical Manuscripts’. Caledonian Medical Journal 6: 34-44.

MacKenzie, L. 1917. Report on the Physical Welfare of Mothers and Children, Dunfermline: Carnegie United Kingdom Trust.

McEwan-Fuijta, E. 2020. Gaelic Language Revitalization Concepts and Challenges: Collected Essays, Halifax: Bradan Press.

McLeod, W. 2001. ‘Gaelic in the New Scotland: Politics, Rhetoric and Public Discourse’. Journal on Ethnopolitics and Minority Issues in Europe 2.

Newspapers and Periodicals:

Times

Glasgow Herald

Spectator 

Edinburgh Evening Courant

Perth Constitutional 

The Lancet

British Medical Journal

Abbreviations:

BMJ    British Medical Journal

NLS     National Library of Scotland