Graves, Robert James (1796–1853)

Irish physician and a leader of the Irish School of Diagnosis, which argued that clinical examination was central to the development of a diagnosis. His name is remembered in the term Graves' Disease, a condition caused by an enlarged and overactive thyroid gland which he first described in 1835.

Graves was born in Dublin. He graduated from Dublin University in 1818 and went on to study in Edinburgh, London, Göttingen, and Berlin. He returned to Dublin in 1821 to become a physician at the Meath Hospital, where he introduced radical reforms, not just in diagnosis. He gave lectures in English instead of Latin and argued that fever patients should continue to receive food and liquids, both counter to common practice. He also initiated the practice of using a watch to time the pulse.

He wrote an influential textbook, Clinical Lectures on the Practice of Medicine (1843), and founded the Park Street School of Medicine.