Robert James Graves

Robert James Graves (27 March 1796 – 20 March 1853) was an Anglo-Irish surgeon after whom Graves' disease takes its name. He was President of the Royal College of Physicians of Ireland, Fellow of the Royal Society of London and the co-founder of the Dublin Journal of Medical Science. He is also claimed to be the uncredited inventor of the second-hand on watches.

Early life The eighth child of the Dean of Ardagh, Richard Graves, and Elizabeth Mary Drought (1767–1827), daughter of Rev. James Drought (1738–1820) D.D., of Dublin and Park, "a member of one of the principal families of the King's County (Offaly)," whose mother was the sister of Theaker Wilder. Wilder, Robert's father and maternal grandfather were all Senior Fellows of Trinity College Dublin, where in 1811 he was entered under his elder brother-in-law, Thomas Meredith, after receiving his early schooling in Downpatrick and Dublin.

After an undergraduate career in the arts, he received a degree in medicine in 1818 and left for London to study surgery under Sir William Blizard. Afterwards, he spent the following three years travelling the continent between stints as an observer at the medical schools of Edinburgh, Berlin, Vienna, Göttingen, Hamburg, Copenhagen and those of France and Italy.

Graves had an exceptional talent for languages, and while in continental Europe he was imprisoned for ten days in Austria when travelling on foot without a passport; the authorities thought him to be a German spy, none of them believing that an Irishman could speak their language so well. By his third wife he was the father of six children, one of whom married Edward Blackburne of Rathfarnham Castle, the eldest son of Francis Blackburne, Lord Chancellor of Ireland. His granddaughter, Georgina (Graves) Synge, was married to a first cousin of the playwright John Millington Synge. Cloghan Castle was left to his eldest son, Lt.-Colonel William Grogan Graves, High Sheriff of King's County.

Death Graves kept a townhouse on Merrion Square but died of liver disease at his country residence, 20 March 1853, at age 56. The year before he died his wife persuaded him to buy Cloghan Castle, County Offaly, which was near to his cousins, the Droughts, at Banagher. It was eventually sold by his grandson in 1908. He was buried in Mount Jerome Cemetery, Dublin. His library, worth £30,000 , was left to Trinity College Dublin. Following his death, a Dublin watchmaking company began selling watches with second hands, a concept Graves had come up with for personal use but didn't patent. A collection of various of his papers, including a biography, was published by his friend and contemporary William Stokes as Studies in Physiology and Medicine, London, 1863.