It is always fascinating when lives cross and all the more so after three hundred years. Those of us to whom it fell to celebrate the tercentenary of Charles Lucas were privileged and honoured indeed. Charles Lucas’s spirit is remarkably alive. The issues that so exercised him are uncannily the very ones of today. The quest for freedom, equality and justice impelled him and cost him. Expert at recognising and utilising the power of the written word, today’s modes of social communication would have suited Lucas to perfection.

The tercentenary of Charles Lucas was marked by a symposium jointly held by the Royal Academy of Medicine in Ireland (RAMI) and Dublin City Council in City Hall on 23 September 2013 at which the Lord Mayor of Dublin Cllr Oisín Quinn presided (Fig. 1). The President, Secretary General and Officers of RAMI and its Section of the History of Medicine were generous in their support as were the Archivists and Officers of Dublin City Council.

Fig. 1
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The Lord Mayor of Dublin and invited speakers at City Hall (2013). At the Royal Academy of Medicine in Ireland and Dublin City Council Charles Lucas Tercentenary Symposium in City Hall with the Lord Mayor of Dublin Cllr Oisín Quinn, left to right Prof Jacqueline Hill (NUIM), Dr. Susan Mullaney Secretary of the Section of the History of Medicine RAMI, Dr. Eoin Magennis President of the Eighteenth Century Ireland Society, Prof David Dickson (TCD) Symposium Chair, Ms Mary O’Doherty President of the Section of the History of Medicine RAMI, Prof James Kelly (SPCD&DCU), Prof Marian Lyons (NUIM) and Ms Ellen Murphy, Dublin City Libraries, Senior Archivist

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The distinguished speakers and chairman of the symposium—experts on Lucas and his era—allowed us to encounter Charles Lucas. It is with gratitude to them and the editor of the Irish Journal of Medical Science that their papers are presented here so that others can discover Charles Lucas who merits attention still.