[Sir] Dominic John Corrigan (1802-80)

Life
b. Thomas St., Dublin; son of shopkeeper; ed. St. Patrick's College, Maynooth, without the seminary; grad. MD Edinburgh, 1825; appt. physician at Jervis St. Hospital, Dublin, at its foundation, 1825; became a heart specialist with a leading practice in Dublin; diagnosed ‘Corrigan’s pulse’, a defect of the aortic valve; published on ‘Permanent Patency of the Aortic Valves’ Medical and Surgical Journal (Edin. April 1832);
 
received honorary diploma of the Royal College of Surgeons, London, 1842; hon. MD, TCD, 1849; served on Commission for Education and created baronet, 1866; appt. Physician to the Queen in Ireland; elected President of the Royal Zoological Society, Dublin; Dublin Pathological Society, and Dublin Pharmaceutical Society; five-times President of the College of Physicians, Dublin; elected Liberal MP for Dublin City, 1870-74, superseded by Arthur Guinness (1st Baron Ardilaun), having opposed sale of drink on Sundays;
 
member of Board of Glasnevin Cemetery; published medical tracts including On Fever and Famine as Cause and Effect in Ireland (1846) - quoted by William Carleton in The Black Prophet;he built ‘Inniscorrig’, a baronial home on Colliemore Rd., Dalkey, with own harbour and granite bust of self over door; d. 1 Feb. 1880; bur. in crypt of St. Andrew's RC Church (Westland Row, Dublin); there is a statue him by John Henry Foley in in the Great Hall of the Royal College of Physicians, Dublin. ODNB

 

Works
Sir Dominic Corrigan, Bart., On Fever and Famine as Cause and Effect in Ireland; with observations on hospital location, and the dispensation in outdoor relief of food and medicine (Dublin: J. Fannin 1846), 33pp. [Contents: Epidemic fever, its extent and evils; Power of becoming contagious; Review of epidemics; Famine, their invariable precursor; Other assigned causes considered; Prevention; Distribution of food, mode of in towns; Distribution of food, mode of in country districts; Fever hospitals, location of; Connexion with work-houses, objection to; Nourishment dispensaries; Conclusion.]

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Criticism
Dr. Eileen Dixon, ‘Sir Dominic Corrigan’, in Dublin Historical Record, Vol. VIII (1945-46), pp.28, 67; R. A. L. Agnew, ‘The achievement of Dominic John Corrigan׎, in Medical History 9, 3 (1 July 1965), pp.230–40 [online].

Articles listed on Public Medicine [PubMed] website (U.S.)
  • ‘The Lancet maketh the man? Sir Dominic John Corrigan (1802-80)’, in Lancet (Dec 20-27 1980), 2, pp.1356-67.
  • ‘Sir Dominic John Corrigan’, in Clinical Cardiology, 9, 8 (Aug 1986), pp.403-06.
  • ‘On the treatment of enuresis in childhood and youth by collodion as described by Sir Dominic John Corrigan of Dublin in 1870’, in Pediatrics, 60, 4 (Oct 1977), p.476.
  • ‘History of Medicine: Sir Dominic Corrigan, MD’, in Circulation, 114, 10 (5 Sept. 2006), 140f.
—Available online

 

Commentary
Brendan Ó Cathaoir, Famine Diary, The Irish Times, 16 March, 1996): During 1846 Corrigan [viz., Fever and Famine ... &c., 1846] is cited in Westminster as pointing out the need for wholesome food in Ireland, asserting that ‘sickness should not be made a chain to drage a man into a poorhouse’; also that ‘the generation that has suffered cannot again be what it has been ... and the offspring will inherit for generations to come the weakness of body and apathy of mind which famine and fever have engendered.’ (p.5.)

 

Notes
Inniscorrig: His Dalkey home, “Inniscorrig”, is still standing.

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