William Stuart Mcrae Craig

Prof William Stuart Mcrae Craig FRSE FRCP FRCPE (1903–1975) was a British physician and medical author. He was an expert on paediatric care. He was author of the highly successful book Care of the Newly Born Infant.

Life

He was born on 19 July 1903 the son of Dr William Craig a GP in Bingley in Yorkshire, and his wife Catherine Jane Stuart. He was educated at Bingley Grammar School and then George Watson’s College in Edinburgh. Originally intending a very different career he graduated BSc in Naval Architecture at Glasgow University in 1924. He work for a year or two in the Clyde shipyards, but then appears to have had a change of heart and decided to start again, and follow in his father’s footsteps. He graduated MB CHB at Edinburgh University in 1930 and MD in 1933.^[1][2]

His first appointment was as Assistant Paediatrician to Charles McNeil at the Royal Hospital for Sick Children, Edinburgh. Here he learnt the importance of prevention and social care in preference to future treatment. In 1936 he joined the Ministry of Health in London and in the Second World War became Medical Officer in charge of South-East Britain. In 1946 Leeds University awarded him a professorship in Paediatrics and Child Care and he continued this role until retiral in 1968.

He was elected a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh in 1936. In 1937 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, his proposers being William Frederick Harvey, Anderson Gray McKendrick, Charles McNeil and Sydney Smith.^[3] He was elected a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians in London in 1956.

He retired to live in Gifford, East Lothian in 1968.

In 1969 he gave the very first Charles McNeil Lecture at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

He died in Edinburgh on 27 June 1975.^[4]

Family

He married Beatrice Anne Hodgson, daughter of Thomas George Hodgson, in 1936. Ironically, they had no children.

Publications

• Child and Adolescent Life in Health and Disease (1946)
• Care of the Newly Born Infant (1955) plus five later editions.
• John Thomson, Pioneer and Father of Scottish Paediatrics (1968)
• The History of the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh (1974)

References