Makers of Modern Medicine

by James J. Walsh

[Footnote 6: For much of the material embodied in this series I am indebted to Sir Charles Cameron, the Historian of the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland, whose courtesy to me while on a visit to Dublin in 1904 is one of the precious memories I shall always cherish. At the same time Sir Christopher Nixon and Sir John Moore, for letters of introduction to whom I was indebted to Prof. Osier, not only gave me valuable suggestions, but demonstrated how kind is the Celtic nature at its best.]

It has been always generally recognized that a very important portion of what is called English literature is really due to the native genius of the English-speaking writers of Irish birth and parentage, whose Celtic qualities of mind and heart have proved the sources of some of the most significant developments in the language of their adoption. What a large lacuna would be created in English literature by the removal from it of the work of such men as Dean Swift, Goldsmith, Burke, Sheridan, and Moore! It is not so generally known, however, that if the work of the distinguished Irish physicians and surgeons of the last century were to be blotted out of English medical literature there would be left quite as striking and as wide a gap. It is, indeed, to what is known as the Dublin School of Medicine, for medical schools have very properly been named usually after the cities rather than the countries in which they were situated, that we owe not a little of our modern progress in practical medicine, and especially the advance in the clinical teaching of the medical sciences. Now that the Gaelic movement is calling attention more than ever before to things Irish, it [{168}] Seems only proper that this feature of the national life should be given its due prominence and that the great members of the Irish School of Medicine should not be without honor in their own and other English-speaking countries.

There are three great names in the history of Irish medicine recognized by all the world as well deserving of enduring fame. These three names are Robert James Graves, William Stokes, and Dominic Corrigan. Graves' name is indelibly attached to the disease known as exophthalmic goitre, which he described and separated from other affections before anyone else had realized its individuality. William Stokes was, perhaps, the best authority on diseases of the heart and lungs in his time. His name will be preserved in the designation of the peculiar form of breathing which occurs in certain comatose conditions and has received the name Cheyne-Stokes respiration, in honor of the men who first called attention to it. Corrigan was in his time one of the greatest authorities on the heart, and especially on the pulse. His name is preserved in the term Corrigan pulse, which is applied to a peculiar condition that occurs very characteristically in disease of the aortic valves of the heart.

The lives of these men deserve to be better known, for they can scarcely fail to be an inspiration to others to do work of a high order in medicine--work that will represent not alone present success and emolument but will stand for medical progress for all time.

Dr. Robert Graves was the youngest son of the Rev. Richard Graves, D.D., Senior Fellow of Trinity College and Regius Professor of Divinity in the University of Dublin, and of Elizabeth, daughter of James Drought, also a fellow of Trinity College, whose family had been long settled in King's County. His father, as a tribute to his distinguished learning, was later promoted to the deanery of Armagh. There [{169}] were two other sons in the family, Richard and Hercules. All three of the boys passed through Trinity College with high honors and, in fact, established a record there that has since been unequalled, for at the degree examinations of three successive years the gold medal in classics and in science, then the highest distinctions attainable by students of Trinity, was conferred upon one of the brothers.

Dr. Graves received his degree of Bachelor of Medicine at the University of Dublin in 1818. After this he studied for some time in London, and then spent three years on the continent, at Berlin, Göttingen, Vienna and Copenhagen, as well as in Paris and certain Italian schools, finally studying also for some months in Edinburgh before his return to Dublin. As Dr. Stokes very well says: "In this large and truly liberal education, which embraced the training of the school, the university and the world, we can discover in part the foundations of his subsequent eminence. He did not content himself, as is so commonly the case, with commending--to use his own words--'the life of a practitioner without practice,' but he made himself intimate with the recent discoveries and modes of thinking in every great school of medicine, whether abroad or at home, and formed friendships with the leading physiologists and physicians of Europe, with many of whom he kept up a correspondence during his life."

An interesting incident in his travels serves to illustrate very well his facility for the acquisition of languages. Once while on a pedestrian journey in Austria he neglected to carry his passport, and was arrested as a spy. He was thrown into prison and for a time his condition seemed serious enough. He insisted that he was a British subject, but his assertions in this matter were immediately repudiated by the Austrian authorities in the little town, who insisted that no [{170}] Englishman could possibly speak German as well as he did. He was kept in prison for some ten days until authentic information could be obtained with regard to him, and, during this time, such was the state of the prison that he suffered many privations. Later in life this gave him a sympathy with the prisoners of Ireland and led to his making suggestions for the amelioration of their condition.

Like practically all the great medical men who have proved to be original workers, Graves' interest was not confined alone to medicine. During his sojourn in Italy he became acquainted with Turner, the celebrated English landscape painter, and was his companion in many journeys. Graves himself was possessed of no mean artistic powers, as his friend Stokes tells us, and his sketches are characterized by natural vigor and truth. His thorough appreciation of his companion, however, and the breadth of his sympathy and admiration for the great painter of nature can perhaps best be understood from some candid expressions of his with regard to their work in common: "I used to work away," he said, "for an hour or more and put down as well as I could every object in the scene before me, copying form and color as faithfully as was possible in the time. When our work was done and we compared drawings the difference was strange. I assure you there was not a single stroke in Turner's drawing that I could see like nature, not a line nor an object, and yet my work was worthless in comparison with his. The whole glory of the scene was there."

After wandering for some three years in Europe, Graves returned to Dublin and at once took a leading position in his profession as well as in society. He came back at a very fortunate period for him. In 1807, Dr. Cheyne, who had been educated in Edinburgh, made the first step toward the foundation of a new school of medical observation, by the [{171}] publication of the first volume of the Dublin Hospital Reports. Dr. Stokes says that the best proof of the value of these reports is that they appear to have given the tone to the subsequent labors of the Irish school which inherited their practical nature and truthfulness. Within a year after Graves' return he appeared as one of the founders of the new school of medicine in Park Street, and was also elected physician to the Meath Hospital, where he commenced to put into effect that system of clinical observation and instruction which has done so much to establish the lasting reputation of the Dublin School of Medicine.

For the next thirty years Graves' life is full of the teaching and the practice of medicine. He was noted for his tenderness toward the poor, but the rich soon came to appreciate his skill. Nothing ever made him neglect his poor patients. Meantime he left his mark on every subject that he handled in medicine. Fevers, nervous diseases of many kinds besides that named after him, tuberculosis, and other forms of pulmonary disease, were all illuminated by his practical genius in a way that has made them clear for succeeding generations in medicine.