John Curry (historian)

John Curry (b. in Dublin in the first quarter of the eighteenth century; d. there, 1780) was an Irish doctor of medicine, historian, and Roman Catholic activist.

Life

He studied medicine at Paris and Reims and returned to Dublin to practise his profession. Curry took part in the campaign of the Irish Catholics for the repeal of penal laws, and was one of the founders, with Charles O'Conor, of the Catholic Committee which met in Essex Street, 1760.

Works

He published in London, in 1747, a "Brief Account from the most authentic Protestant writers of the Irish Rebellion, 1641", against partisan anti-Catholic history. This book was bitterly attacked by Walter Harris in a 1752 volume published in Dublin, and in reply Curry published his "Historical Memoirs", afterwards enlarged and published in 1775 under the title "An Historical and Critical Review of the Civil Wars in Ireland". This is his major work; a new edition of it, enlarged from Curry's manuscript, was published by Charles O'Connor in two volumes (Dublin, 1786) and again in one volume (Dublin, 1810). In this work, after a brief glance over the developments in Ireland after the invasion of Henry II of England, he takes up the history at the reign of Elizabeth I of England and carries it down to the Settlement under William III of England.

Besides these, he published "An Essay on Ordinary Fevers" (London, 1743) and "Some Thoughts on the Nature of Fevers" (London, 1774).