GRAVES, ROT1ERT JAMES (1797-1853). An Irish physician famous as a clinician, lecturer, and original investigator. His name, with that of Basedow (q.v.), is known to modern students of medicine in connection with exophthalmic goitre; but it was his work in the treatment of fevers, especially typhus, which was most impor tant. He came of a Dublin family of divines and scholars, and studied medicine at Trinity Col lege. After a brilliant university career, Graves pursued his medical studies in London, Berlin, Gottingen, Hamburg, and Copenhagen. Return ing to Dublin in 1824, he established, with some others, the private medical school known as the Park Street School. At this time clinical or bed side teaching was practically unknown, students getting their knowledge from formal lectures and private study, and to Graves is due the credit of thoroughly incorporating the clinical method into elementary medical education. As early as 1819 he began his experiences with typhus fever, when he was sent by the Government to take charge of an extensive district in the west of Ireland where the fever was raging. In the suc
cessive epidemics which visited the country from 1819 to 1848 he was actively engaged. He recog nized the contagiousness of typhus and intro duced a tonic and supportive treatment in place of the starvation and purging method which then obtained. His efforts had much to do with stamp ing out the disease in Ireland. In 1827 he was elected professor of the institutes of medicine to the King and Queen's College of Physicians. His contributions to scientific literature were many. He was one of the editors of the Dublin Hospital Reports, was associated with Sir Robert Kane in the editorship of the Dublin Journal of Medical Science, and wrote much for the Trans actions of the Royal Irish Academy and the Edinburgh Philosophical Journal. His book Clin ical Lectures on the Practice of Medicine (1843) was used in every medical school in Europe.