First thanks to the Wellcome Trust whose generosity allowed this study to be undertaken. Thanks also to the readers of this manuscript whose comments were wise and helpful.
I owe a particular debt of gratitude to the librarians and archivists of the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland and to the Council of the College who gave me permission to examine their manuscript collection relating to the history of the College. Most of all a special thanks to Mary OâDoherty of the College whose assistance and guidance was invaluable.
I also benefited from the help and advice of Harriet Wheelock, archivist of the Royal College of Physicians of Ireland. Other librarians and archivists greatly assisted. They include the staff of the Queenâs University Medical Library, Queenâs Universityâs McClay Library, and the University Archivist. The Registrarâs Office at Queenâs were also very helpful as was the Belfast Central Library. I also very much appreciate the hospitality of the Central Catholic Library, Dublin who went out of their way to help.
The staff of Public Record Office of Northern Ireland greatly facilitated the research as did the staff and archivists in the National Archives in Dublin and the National Library, Dublin.
Further afield, I would like to thank Dr Caroline Morrison of Chicago who helped smoothed access to the American Medical Associationâs archives and to the staff at the AMA archive and the archivists at Rockefeller Archive at Tarrytown, New York State.
Fellow historians were also of great help, in particular Laura Kelly who, in the course of her own research on medical students in Ireland, was generous in her advice and who gave me many useful references. Professor David Wright has played an important part in the development of research on medical migration and brought me to Canada in 2012 for a conference at McGill University where I met other researchers in the field.
I benefited from the special knowledge of Professor Frank Geary of the Ulster University and Professor Leslie Clarkson of Queenâs University Belfast to whom I offer thanks. Dr Patrick Maume also passed on references and suggestions from which I benefited. Anne Crowther, Marguerite Dupree, Anne Digby and Megan Vaughan are academics from whose ground work in the area I benefited greatly. Ailbhe Enright of the Medical Registration Council of Ireland kindly answered several of my questions.
Thanks also to Frank Huisman and Rosanna Woensdregt at Brill and to Jonathan Reinarz my editor. I am grateful to Oxford and Cambridge University
Many thanks to my mother-in-law, Dr Mary Bew, whose family produced a generation of Irish migrant doctors to Britain and the United States and who, herself, enrolled in the Indian Medical Service towards the end of the Second World War reaching the rank of Captain. Also her brother, Dr Anthony Leahy, who practised in Gateshead, England for over forty years. They both supplied many stories of their experience as Irish medical graduates on the move.