'Doctors for Export' - by Greta Jones (Hardcover)

About the Book

This is the first full-length case study of medical migration from a particular country and over a significant period of time. It concentrates upon Ireland who exported around forty per cent of her medical graduates from 1860 to 1960.

Book Synopsis

This is the first full-length study of doctor migration from Ireland covering roughly a century of the export of Irish medical graduates to other parts of the world. From 1860 around forty percent of Ireland's medical graduates left to pursue careers elsewhere. The book examines the factors which drove emigration, the shifting destinations of the emigrants and the effect of migration both upon them and the Ireland they left behind. This was the migration of a part of the Irish middle class, small in terms of Irish emigration as a whole, but important in the global history of medical migration. At the end of the twentieth century doctor migration as a whole has increased and become a significant part of the medical experience. The book is a contribution to the growing literature on the global history of doctor movements across the world.

Review Quotes

"Doctors for Export is a hugely impressive contribution to both Irish and global medical historiography. The book benefits from a truly rich level of qualitative and quantitative research and thorough analysis that is attentive to sensitive matters such as Irish identity."

---- Ian Miller, in: Bulletin of the History of Medicine (2023) 97 (1): pp.163-165

About the Author

Greta Jones is emeritus professor of history at Ulster University and the author of several books on Darwinism, eugenics and the history of tuberculosis. With help from the Wellcome Trust, she set up the Centre for the History of Medicine in Ireland at Ulster University. In 2019 she was elected an honorary fellow of the Royal College of Physicians of Ireland.