CRAGIN 256 CRAIG Dr. Cragin's professional duties were so exacting that he had but little time to devote to other pursuits. Even his vacations were broken into by calls of a professional nature and but few had the privilege of knowing any but the professional side of his life. A few knew that he founded a library and erected a handsome building for it in his home town of Colchester and fewer still the extent to which he gave his financial support to the medical missionary work in China. With his learning and extensive clinical ex- perience Dr. Cragin was a master of his spe- cialty and was a teacher of unusual force and magnetism. Dr. Cragin confined his professional activi- ties entirely to the specialties of gynecology and obstetrics. As a gynecologist he was eas- ily one of the best in the city. A shrewd diagnostician, a rapid operator, conservative, of sound judgment, he not only gave his patients honest advice, but obtained remark- ably good results. It is not as a gynecologist, however, that he will be remembered, but as an obstetrician. For nearly twenty years in charge of the active obstetrical service at the Sloane Hospital with its 1,500 deliveries a year, maintaining meanwhile an extensive pri- vate and a large consulting practice, he had almost unequalled opportunities for acquiring a wide knowledge of obstetrics. And with his quick perception, his remarkable memory, and his unbounded energy, he made good use of these opportunities. It is doubtful if anywhere in this country, among all the justly cele- brated obstetricians, there was one who was . his equal in judgment, diagnostic skill, or operative ability. He has been criticised for turning out so little scientific work during all these years. In his later life especially his energies were directed more particularly towards operative gynecology, rather than to the problems of obstetrics. Except for his textbook on ob- stetrics, on which he spent much time and thought, his writings and teachings were almost exclusively on clinical subjects. His fame was won and maintained as a clinician and teacher, and on these will he be given his place in medical history. It is undoubtedly trtae that for years his was the last word in obstetrical consultations. In time of doubt, his was the advice sought. As an obstetrical consultant he stood on a pinnacle by himself. He married Mary R. Willard at Colchester, Conn., in 1889, who survived him with three children, two daughters and a son. He died of cardio-renal disease October 21, 1918, from which he had suffered for sev- eral years. Dr. Cragin's interests, outside of his pro- fessional work, were chiefly farming and re- ligion. Every summer during the months of July and August, he returned to his home town of Colchester, and became once more an enthusiastic farmer, taking a keen interest in the outdoor life and manifold happenings on his farm, in that beautiful country among the hills. There in his quiet home, on the wide elm-shaded street, surrounded by his family, far from the jangle of the telephone, and the discordant city noises, he rested and regained strength for his strenuous winter's work in the city. During the winter Dr. Cragin was an ardent churchgoer ; for twenty- five years he was a member of the Central Presbyterian Church, in which he was an elder, and rarely indeed did he miss the Sunday service or the Wednesday evening prayer meet- ing. With the manifold calls of his large practice, this undeviating regularity was little short of marvelous. He was also a systematic and most generous contributor to foreign mis- sions, notably in China, where in the town of Hwai Yuen he gave the money for a Woman's Hospital, and for years he supported entirely one missionary, a woman doctor. George H. Ryder. Craig, Benjamin Faneuil (1829-1877) Born in Watertown, Massachusetts, the eld- est son of Gen. H. K. Craig, chief of ord- nance. United States Army, he was educated in Boston schools and finished at the Univer- sity of Pennsylvania, graduating A. B. in 1848 and A. M. and M. D. in 1851. Inspired with an earnest interest in chemical and physical science, he desired to perfect himself in this rather than engage as a medical practitioner, and immediately after graduation went abroad and studied in London and Paris. Returning in 1853, he was appointed professor of chem- istry in the Georgetown Medical College jnd lectured there for five years. In 1858 he was appointed to the chemical laboratory of the Smithsonian Institution. On the outbreak of Civil War it became necessary to engage a consulting chemist for the immense transactions that devolved on the purveying department of the army medical staff, and Craig was chosen. The various reports and innumerable analyses that he pre- pared were necessarily confidential; but had they appeared in scientific journals, they would outweigh the material on which many promi- nent modern scientific reputations are founded. After the close of the war Craig continued
