Dr Garrett FitzGerald
Dr Garrett FitzGerald examines the life of work of the great Dr Hunny O’Neill, who was ahead of his time in advocating an ‘upstanding’ existence, which is now recognised as a way of protecting ageing DNA and extending one’s lifespan.
Let us continue our recollections of the unsung heroes of Irish medicine. Today, the case of Dr Hunny O’Neill (b 1905).
His father Connie O’Neill named the boy for his brother Atilio and the school mates called him Hunny. The young lad seemed to have an innate sense of what was good for him.
From the age of eight months, when he first took to his bipedal calling, he showed a serious disinclination to sitting back down again. His mother was convinced that there was an equine streak in the father’s side as she daily woke him from the upright position for school.
He refused the sedentary disposition from his first day of primary education. The Brothers beat all seven shades out of him, the traditional method for getting a child’s mind right. He was attended to by healers, monsignors and exorcists to no avail. By the time young Hunny was 12, he was reluctantly allowed to stand at the back of the class throughout the learning day on condition that he never permitted his hands to stray
below his waist — a venial sin in those far-off days.
A ‘do-as-I-do’ man, Hunny never permitted his pet hybrid gadhar Darwin to sit. That K9 lived for 52 years, demising only when the complications of the foreshortened-legs syndrome finally overcame his steely will and the ever-present terror of the kick in the rear. By this time, in a process described below, Darwin had evolved into a strikingly perfect German sausage dog, tolerably versed in algebra and the classics.
As is often the case where strange lads from the country are concerned, Hunny enrolled in Trinity College to read Medicine. He soon led a student revolution which gained standing status for all of his classmates. By his third year, all the seating had been removed from the lecture halls and seminar rooms. Cadavers were dissected in the upright position.
Buttery, up
By his fourth, even the professors who wined in the Buttery did so with extended knees. Many of the teaching staff took to sleeping upright, though the change was not evident in some. Within a decade, the staff did not appear to be getting any older with the passage of time; actual rejuvenation in some led to overcrowding in Barbarella’s on Wednesday nights many decades on.
‘Funny’ Hunny O’Neill MB (the sobriquet added in recognition of some strange personal habits) is now 109 years old and still practising his unique brand of medicine. There is a village in East Clare — where he did a weekend locum in 1936 — in which the average age of the citizens is currently 93. He was recently honoured there with a presentation after an over-eighties hurling tournament for up-and-coming stars. Long hairs — which he has plaited — droop from his ears down to his clavicles.
He refuses to have them cut as he ‘feels’ they may reflect a stage of evolution not as yet understood; in any event, his barber is unable to reach them, the subject standing in the tonsorial chair.
What has been evident to O’Neill for over a century has now been confirmed in the Karolinska Institute in Sweden; sitting down may accelerate the ageing process. It’s all in the length of the telomeres — long telomeres mean long life, ultra-short telomeres suggest you should not purchase green bananas.
If you are sedentary for significant amounts in your day, you are all but goosed. Just look at the angles of the typeface in this essay and you will note that this masterpiece has been typed by a stand-up person (unless the editor has interfered with him).
Telomeres, when shortened, allow the chromosomes to fudge their functions and cease their replication. Dr Hunny believes that this latter handicap also stymies evolution and may actually reverse it. Conversely, unfudged chromosomes allow evolvers proceed to their programmed selves at an accelerated pace.
Hunny cites the glaring historical fact that the apes did not become ‘us’ until they stood up for themselves.
Naturally, one would expect a longer life-span in the more evolved. There are exceptions to the rule evident in some parts of the country where some can still be not seen crouching behind whins and scheach bushes.
O’Neill is currently promoting his ‘Seas Suas’ training device. It consists of specially fortified chains (Matt Talbot bungee) that hang from a reinforced-steel ceiling plate. The chains support a body harness with hypo-allergenic nipple guards and leg-openings in a fortified hygienic gusset. For the partners of private
patients, who may wish to ensure that there is no sitting down on the job, rawhide flagellae are an optional extra.
Only recently have I taken serious heed of Dr O’Neill’s advice. But, I should have done so from the age of five. I well recall that occasion when Kathleen in Nurse Hogan’s Nursing Home admonished me because I had given her ‘cheek’.
“I’ll redden your arse for you, boy, and you won’t be able to sit down till Christmas!” I should have stood my ground and taken it like a man. I’d be only about 23 now.
