Sick Maintenance
If it seemed that the patient would recover but still needed nursing, the injurer was responsible for that. This was known as sick maintenance, rendering variously crólige, folog n-othrusa, folog, or othrus in different texts. Bretha Crólige goes into great detail about this process, describing how the injurer had to find a suitable location and move the victim. Then the injurer had to pay for food for the victim and a retinue—which could be considerable depending on the victim's rank. The injurer also had to provide someone to fulfill the victim's duties while he was incapacitated. He also had to pay a fine for the missed opportunity for procreation if appropriate.
Bretha Crólige also goes into the importance of keeping a proper environment for the victim during his sick-maintenances. Largely this means that anything that might cause loud noise was prohibited in the vicinity. This included fights by men as well as by dogs, the playing of games and even the disciplining of children.
However, it is also clear from the law tracts that the practice of Sick Maintenance was being discarded. Thus, while Críth Gablach mentions some of what each individual is entitled to while being nursed according to his rank, it also mentions that the practice was no longer in use, and instead an additional fine encompassed the same provisions the injurer would have had to pay for under sick maintenance. Bretha Crólige does not mention anything about the practice being obsolete. However, it does mention that certain types of person could not be maintained because of the difficulty in doing so. Thus it was very hard to provision those of the highest rank and obviously impossible to find a substitute to do their work. Certain professionals could similarly be difficult. On the other hand, a number of persons could cause difficulty to the people maintaining the victim. Such troublesome individuals included the insane and women likely to cause trouble for those nursing them.
Read more about this topic: Early Irish Law, Substantive Law, Physical Injury
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