Wales & medicine
The Physicians of Myddfai
A family of country doctors who lived in the parish of Myddfai, their origins are associated with a story preserved in a series of medieval medical texts which mentions one Rhiwallon Feddyg and his sons, Cadwgan, Gruffudd and Einion, who were doctors to Rhys Gryg, lord of Dinefwr in the thirteenth century. Myddfai was one of the free manors of Cantref Bychan, the territory of Rhys ap Gruffudd (The Lord Rhys), and with the demise of the native Welsh Princes it became part of the lordship of Llandovery. According to a thirteenth-century extent of that lordship, the lord of Llandovery had the right to call to his service a doctor from among the freeholders of Myddfai.
There is evidence that some kind of medical succession continued in Myddfai until the eighteenth century. The Physicians of Myddfai are mentioned in the letters of Lewis Morris, the antiquary, and the gravestones of the last of their line, David Jones (d. 1719) and John Jones (d. 1739), are still to be seen in the church there. Such a succession in educated, professional families was a characteristic of Celtic society and similar examples are known to have existed in Scotland and Ireland. During the last two hundred years the traditions concerning the ability of the Physicians have become associated with a folk-tale about Llyn y Fan Fach.
The manuscripts of the Physicians of Myddfai contain collections of medical material of a type common to the whole of Europe in the Middle Ages, aimed at giving instructions for diagnosis, prognosis, treatment by surgery, by drugs, by letting blood and by cauterizing. The instructions are recorded either in the form of short tractates or in the form of lists of recipes using herbs, animals and minerals. Some are translations of short works emanating from the Classical period, while others reflect medical movements of the Middle Ages, such as the Salerno and Chartres movements.
The philosophical basis of the instructions is that of the humours inherited from the Classical period and expressed in the work of Galen and Hippocrates. The colophon to the medical texts emphasises the connection between Rhiwallon and his sons and the tradition of writing medical texts. The justification for this emphasis is given in a sentence which echoes a principle expressed in the work of Galen himself, “And this is the reason they caused their knowledge to be written in this way: lest there be no-one who would know as much as they knew after them”.
William Price
Doctor, Chartist and pioneer of cremation. He was a familiar figure in the district of Pontypridd, where, dressed in a white tunic, scarlet waistcoat, green trousers and a fox-skin hat, he would perform druidic rites at the Rocking Stone on the Common, and he won a wider reputation as a physician and surgeon. His notoriety was caused as much by his advocacy of free love, vegetarianism and cremation as by his eloquent denunciation of vaccination, vivisection, orthodox religion, the ironmasters and the law.
After the Chartist march on Newport in 1839 he fled to France disguised as a woman and in Paris he became acquainted with the poet Heine. Of the many lawsuits in which he delighted the most important was his trial at Cardiff Assizes in 1884 when he was accused of having tried to burn the corpse of his infant son, whom he had named Iesu Grist (Jesus Christ). His acquittal established the legality of cremation in British Law and paved the way for the passing of the first comprehensive Cremation Act in 1902. Huge crowds attended the doctor’s funeral at Caerlan Fields, Llantrisant, when his body was cremated in accordance with his detailed instructions.
(Information from the Oxford Companion to the Literature of Wales compiled and edited by Meic Stephens and published in 1986 by the Oxford University Press)
Dates of significance and interest
c.945 The Laws of Hywel Dda specified payment for medical treatment and placed mediciners (doctors) twelfth in order of precedence at court.
1349 The Black Death first appeared in Wales and killed up to 100,000 by 1420.
1352 The oldest record of lay medical practitioners in Wales comes from Newborough, Anglesey.
1354 Henry, first Duke of Lancaster, born at Grosmont Castle, Gwent, wrote Le Livre des Seintes Medicines (“The Book of Sacred Medicines/Remedies”).
c.1470 - 1480 Birth in the Vale of Clwyd of Bened ap Rhys (Bened Feddyg – Bened the Doctor), compiler of the earliest surviving medical manuscript in Welsh.
1490s Lewis of Caerleon, who flourished at this time, was physician to Henry VII (Henry Tudor) and his mother, and possibly Catherine of Aragon also.
1544 Thomas Phaer (or Phayer), a lawyer and physician and resident of
1553 Cilgerran, Pembrokeshire, published the first medical books written in English for the intelligent layperson – The Regiment of Life and The Book of Children.
1593 Plague killed 35 people in Presteigne, Radnorshire.
1638 In Bedwellty, Monmouthshire, 82 people died of plague.
1652 In the last outbreak of plague to occur in Wales, about 400 died in Haverfordwest.
1705 – 6 A smallpox outbreak killed 60 people in Penmachno, Gwynedd.
1722 – 3 A smallpox outbreak killed over 70 people in Carmarthen.
1726 – 31 Hundreds died throughout Wales in a typhus outbreak.
1739 Death of John Jones, reputed to have been the last of the famous Meddygon Myddfai (Physicians of Myddfai).
1762 Smallpox killed 20 people in Holyhead.
1774 Cardiff became the first town in Wales to obtain an Improvement Act for paving, lighting, cleaning streets, lanes and passages and removing public nuisances.
1817 The first hospital was established in Swansea, later Swansea General.
1832 The first cholera epidemic killed about 500 people throughout Wales.
1834 Poor Law Amendment Act brought the treatment of the poor under the control of orthodox medicine for the first time.
1837 First public hospital in Cardiff opened – Cardiff (later Royal) Infirmary.
1848 A community health hospital was opened at Blaenau Ffestiniog.
1849 A second cholera epidemic killed over 3,000 people in Wales.
1851 The first medical officer of health in Wales was appointed at Towyn, Denbighshire.
1854 The third cholera epidemic killed about 1,000 people in Wales.
1865 In Swansea 15 people died of yellow fever in the only outbreak of the disease ever to occur in Britain.
1866 The fourth and last cholera epidemic killed about 2,000 people in Wales.
1870 Cardiff Medical Society, the oldest in Wales, was formed.
1884 Flat Holm began to be used to isolate suspected cholera patients.
1885 The first woman doctor in Wales, Frances Hoggan, was registered.
1887 The first hospital was opened in the Rhondda Valleys.
1906 The first purpose-built sanatorium in Wales opened at Allt-yr-Yn, Newport.
1910 The King Edward VII National Memorial Association was formed to campaign to stamp out tuberculosis in Wales.
1912 The Welsh Health Service Insurance Commission was established.
1914 By now the South Wales Miners Medical Scheme had the best developed medical facilities in the UK for ordinary people.
1915 The first pit-head baths in Wales were opened at Deep Navigation Colliery, Treharris, Gwent.
1918 The Prince of Wales Orthopaedic Hospital was opened in Cardiff – “the Welsh Roehampton”.
1918 – 19 A “Spanish flu” epidemic killed about 10,000 people throughout Wales.
1919 The Welsh Board of Health was established.
1920 The South Wales Sanatorium opened at Talgarth, Powys, was the largest in the UK with 304 beds.
1939 The South Wales Coal Dust Research Committee was established. A report showed that seven of the thirteen Welsh counties had the highest incidence of tuberculosis in England and Wales.
1943 Tenovus, the medical charity and research organisation, was founded in Cardiff.
1944 The first mass radiography unit for chest X-rays in the UK was established by the Welsh National Memorial Association.
1946 A Pneumoconiosis Research Unit was established at Llandough Hospital near Cardiff.
1948 The Welsh Regional Hospital Board was established as hospitals were nationalised under the National Health Service Act.
1960 The world’s first fully equipped spina bifida unit was opened in Cardiff by Tenovus.
1962 A smallpox outbreak in south Wales killed 17 people.
1967 The Tenovus Cancer Research Centre in Cardiff was opened.
1971 The University Hospital of Wales, Cardiff, was opened.
1982 BUPA private hospital was opened in Cardiff.
1985 The Heartbeat Wales campaign was launched to tackle the heart disease problem in Wales.
1989 Newly qualified doctors were allowed to take the Hippocratic Oath in Welsh for the first time.
1992 The first NHS Trust (Pembrokeshire) and the first fund-holding general practices in Wales were established.
(Information for Reference Wales, compiled by John May and published by the University of Wales Press in 1994)