Sir, - It grieves me to fault your brilliant cartoonist, Martyn Turner, but if we are to believe tradition he is about 2,500 years behind the times with his caption of Saturday, September 26th. According to legend, the first hand transplant in Ireland and possibly in the world was performed after the first battle of Moytura about 487 BC. The rule of the Firbolgs was overthrown by the Tuatha de Danann. The latter's leader, Nuadhat, son of Cochaidh, had his hand cut off during the battle, an injury which would debar him from the kingship. Credne Cerd, our first artificial limbmaker, fashioned an artificial hand in silver. Diancecht, the Irish Aesculopius, fitted it to the stump. Nuadhat became known as Airgetlamh and his silver hand is carried to this day on the crest of the Army Medical Corps.
According to the Leabhar Gabhala of the O'Clery family the hand had motion in every finger and joint. Diancecht's son Miach decided to go one better than his father and infused feeling as well as motion into the prosthesis. But the story has a sad ending, for at the second battle of Moytura, Nuadhat was killed and Diancecht, jealous of his son's superior skill, murdered him.
Diancecht also had a daughter who was a skilled herbalist but he became jealous of her also and deliberately mixed up the herbs she had gathered so that no one could identify them or their properties. - Yours, etc., John Fleetwood Snr,
Proby Square,
Blackrock,
Co Dublin.