Rebel in the Soul

Dr. Noël Browne was elected to the Irish Parliament in the general election of 1948. Handsome, intense, arrogant, and unpredictable, he was only 33 years of age, with few political skills but a burning ambition to rid Ireland of the scourge of tuberculosis, which had wiped out most of his family. Upon the introduction of his “Mother and Child Scheme,” a plan to provide free postnatal care to women and all children under the age of 16, he quickly found himself at odds with the “Man of Destiny” — party leader and ex-Irish Republican Army chief Seán MacBride — and the ruthless, obsessive tactician Dr. John Charles McQuaid, the Archbishop of Dublin.