ABSTRACT
The alarm felt at the news of the potato disease that was sweeping Europe in mid-1845, finally appearing in Ireland in early September, was summed up by an editorial, written by Dr Lyon Playfair, in the well-respected Gardeners' Chronicle Inevitably perhaps, the potato as a subsistence diet was disparaged within the Commissioners' reports. Dr John Lindley claimed that 'the famine was not an unmixed evil to Ireland', on the grounds that it 'destroyed' dependence on the potato and 'compelled the Irish to live on more nutritious types of diet'. The much-praised Atlas of the Great Irish Famine, published in 2012, reaffirmed this view, stating, 'The hegemony of the potato was broken by the Great Famine'. In the event of a continuance of dry weather, and in soils tolerably dry, authors recommend that the potatoes should be allowed, for the present, to remain in the land.
