Thomas Dromgoole

Dromgoole, Thomas, M.D., a physician, a nationalist, was born in Ireland the middle of the 18th century, and took his medical degree at Edinburgh. He spoke at the meetings of the Catholic Board with a spirit and ability not often met with, and was one of those who offered the earliest and most strenuous opposition to the "Veto" compromise. "The weapon he delighted in was the double-edged sword of scholastic dialectics. The councils, the fathers, the dusty library of ancient and modern controversy, were his classics. Valiant, uncompromising, headstrong, he bore with a sulky composure, on his sevenfold shield of theology, all the lighter shafts of contemporary ridicule." Sheil spoke of him thus: "Dromgoole's countenance was full of medical and theological solemnity, and he carried a huge stick with a golden head, on which he pressed both hands in speaking; and indeed from the manner in which he swayed his body, and knocked his stick at the end of every period to the ground, which he accompanied with a guttural 'hem,' he seemed some a kind of rhetorical paviour, busily engaged in making the great road of liberty, and paving the way to Emancipation." His latter days were spent in Rome; and he died probably in 1815.

Sources

73. Catholic Association of Ireland: Thomas Wyse. 2 vols. London, 1829.

104b. Directories, Dublin, from 1743.

208. Lanigan, Dr., and Irish Wits and Worthies: William J. FitzPatrick, LL.D. Dublin, 1873.
Lanigan, Rev. John, see No. 119.