Neurologist Niall explores links with Connemara in new book

Arts Week with Judy Murphy

Neurologist Niall Tubridy and his better-known younger brother, Ryan, enjoyed one of their regular trips to Clifden last week. Broadcaster Ryan posed for selfies and Niall signed copies of his engaging and informative book Just One More Question: Stories from a Life in Neurology at The Clifden bookshop.

The Tubridys have strong links with the area – their grandfather, Seán, was a GP in Connemara and served as a Fianna Fáil TD for Galway; the current generation visit regularly and have cousins living locally.

However, as Niall documents in his book – a fascinating and accessible insight into the sometimes-obscure area of brain medicine – everything could have been so different.

In November 1919, Seán Tubridy, who had just graduated in medicine from UCG, took up a position of locum in  Béal a’ Daingin. He was standing in for Dr Earne, who was going on holidays. On the evening Seán Tubridy arrived, a call came for a doctor to visit a patient in Camus, which required a currach journey. Dr Earne offered to go, leaving Dr Tubridy with “a clear book” for the following day. Returning from Camus, the currach overturned. Dr Earne and the boatmen, Thomas Hanrahan and Patrick Kelly, were drowned.

“If my grandfather had gone on that boat, there would have been no Late Late Toy Show and no book – not that that would have mattered so much,” says Niall, with a laugh.

Niall only learned about that fateful event when he was a young house doctor, “running around” a Dublin hospital.

“We were 23 or 24 and were constantly exhausted,” he recalls. “With some of the patients, it was like they were in loco parentis; even though they were sick, they’d be protecting you.”

During a non-medical conversation with one such patient from Galway, Niall first heard the story of his grandfather and the older doctor whose generous gesture had meant his own death. Not surprisingly, it left a big impression.

Seán Tubridy died 20 years later in his early 40s – in his 1939 obituary, the Connacht Tribune described him as “a painstaking conscientious doctor” and “a great Connemara man”.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.

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