Abstract
Jimmy Craig had many talents and virtues.
A keen sportsman, he played rugby for his school and university and in his younger days was an amateur boxer of note. Directly from medical school he joined the Medical Corps of the South African Forces fighting in the Western desert, and then went up the boot of Italy. On his return to Johannesburg, his home town, he developed expertise in cerebral palsy treatment and surgery.
From about 1970 until the year before his death in 1992, he regularly visited Ikhwezi Lokusa School for the Orthopaedically Handicapped, just outside Umtata, once or twice a year. His visits lasted a week at a time.
In those years he assessed approximately 1 500 children and operated on about 600. For the first 15 years, the operations were almost exclusively soft tissue surgery: tendon lengthening, tendon transfers and clubfoot releases. As the facilities in Umtata were upgraded, he performed an increasing amount of bone surgery. The operations he did were mainly on the lower limbs. They included lengthening of the triceps surae at the level of the gastrocnemius, lengthening of the tendo Achillis, release of hamstrings and hip adductors, recession of iliopsoas recession at the hips and Souter slides. On the upper limbs he fairly regularly performed surgical release of the first web space and release of flexor carpi ulnaris.
He closely supervised the postoperative care provided by the school, which always had at least one expert Bobarth trained physiotherapist in residence.
The abstracts were prepared by Professor M. B. E. Sweet. Correspondence should be addressed to him at The Department of Orthopaedic Surgery, Medical School, University of Witwatersrand, 7 York Road, Parktown, Johannesburg, 2193 South Africa
