Beaton medical kindred

The Beaton medical kindred, also known as Clann Meic-bethad and Clan MacBeth, and by the Gaelic surnames MacBeatha, MacBeathad, and MacBhethad, was a Scottish kindred of professional physicians who practised medicine in the classical Gaelic tradition from the Middle Ages to the Early Modern Era.

The kindred appears to have emigrated from Ireland in the fourteenth century, where members seem to have originally learned their craft. According to tradition, the kindred first arrived in Scotland in the retinue of the Áine Ní Chatháin, daughter of Cú Maighe na nGall Ó Catháin, a woman who married Aonghus Óg Mac Domhnaill in about 1300. In time the kindred came to be prominent in the Scottish Highlands and Islands, although the earliest known member appears on record in the Lowlands, in Dumfries, during the early fourteenth century. The kindred first came to be associated with Islay in the early fifteenth century, and afterwards proceeded to spread to other islands. Eventually, the kindred became the largest and longest serving of the three major mediaeval medical dynasties in Gaelic Scotland.

The kindred is commonly confused with the unrelated Bethune or Beaton family, historically centred in Fife. In fact, the medical kindred adopted the surname Beaton in the fifteenth century. By the seventeenth century, most of the seventeen or so families within the kindred had adopted the surname Beaton, although two used the surname Bethune. Partly as a result members of the medical kindred mistakenly came to think of themselves as descended from the Bethunes of Balfour, the principal branch of the aforesaid Bethune or Beaton family (who were ultimately of Continental origin).

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