Perspective in liver disease: An Irish experience

Abstract

Graves travelled extensively and on one trip to Italy in 1819 he was joined by a man he describes as of rough exterior and being more "like a ship's mate" (Widdess, 1963). This man sketched extensively and was in fact the famous English painter - J. M. W. Turner. Graves, who was also sketching, was under no illusion as to who was the master and remarked later to Stokes - "When we compared drawings, the effect was strange. Not a single stroke in Turner's drawing was like nature … and yet my work was worthless in comparison to his. The whole glory of the scene was there". Graves acknowledged Turner's mastery in the field of sketching. No one can deny that this extra-ordinary man, with his clinical observations, deserves his eminent place in Irish medicine. Indeed continued studies of his writings can still prove beneficial to the present day scholar.