In the history of medicine, Elizabeth O'Farrell is one of the names that keeps returning.
The record lists Elizabeth O'Farrell as Irish nurse and revolutionary, delivered the surrender at the Easter Rising.
Elizabeth O'Farrell was born at Dublin in 1884. Her recorded nationality is Ireland.
Around the turn of the twentieth century, laboratory medicine, vaccines and public health began to change mortality at population scale.
The test of medical work is whether practice changed, not whether the argument was elegant.
That the work was done from Ireland matters: hospitals, training and research funding are unevenly distributed, and they decide which questions can be asked.
Elizabeth O'Farrell died in 1957, aged 73. What survives is the change in practice, which is how a medical life is actually measured.
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