Cruise, Sir Francis Richard (1834–1912), doctor, was born 3 December 1834 in Dublin, son of Francis Cruise (d. 1834), solicitor, and an English mother, Eleanor Mary Cruise (née Brittain). He was educated at Belvedere College, Dublin (1845–8), and Clongowes Wood College, Co. Kildare (1848–51). He entered TCD and studied at the Richmond Hospital under Dominic Corrigan (qv), who selected him as his resident clinical clerk, and graduated BA (1857), MB (1858) (Dubl.). Suffering from poor health due to excessive work, he travelled through the backwoods of North America and became an expert rifle shot. Returning to Dublin, he was admitted licentiate (1859) of the (R)K&QCP(I), elected member of the Royal College of Surgeons, London (1860), and graduated MD (1861) (Dubl.).
He established himself in private practice, lectured in anatomy in 1858, and in medicine from 1864 at the Carmichael School of Medicine, Dublin – where he had previously attended lectures – and, on the opening (1861) of the Mater Misericordiae Hospital, was appointed assistant, later senior surgeon (1861–78); subsequently confining himself to medicine, he served as physician under the designation of consulting surgeon (1878–1912). He was respected as a careful clinician and an inspiring teacher.
He is famous for his construction of the first effective endoscope; he improved on earlier instruments by ingeniously devising effective illumination and designing attachments enabling it to be used to examine internal organs, including the bladder, rectum, uterus, pharynx, and larynx. He first demonstrated his instrument before the Medical Society of the K&QCP(I) and published ‘The utility of the endoscope as an aid in the diagnosis and treatment of disease’ (Dubl. Q. Jn. Med. Sci., xxxix (1865) 329–63) in which he stated that ‘there is no portion of the human body into which a straight tube can be introduced in which it will not be found of service’ (ibid., 333). To demonstrate its utility, he described how Robert McDonnell (qv) inserted in the bladder of a cadaver a brass screw, a bullet, and plaster of Paris, which were all readily identified by Cruise. He used the instrument primarily to investigate diseases of the urethra and bladder and was the first to describe the upward extension of the pathological process in gonorrhoea. It was exhibited at the Dublin meeting of the British Medical Association (1867), introduced in the London Lock Hospital by Christopher Heath (1835–1905), and subsequently used throughout England. He presented his endoscope with its cystoscopic attachment to the RCSI.
He became interested in psychiatry, studied in France, in Nancy and Paris (1890), and described his experiences in ‘Hypnotism’ (Dubl. Jn. Med. Sc., xci, no. 233 (1891), 377–96); as visiting physician to St Vincent's Lunatic Asylum, Fairview, Dublin, he was one of the first in Ireland to apply hypnotism in medical practice, though he subsequently abandoned its use. Consultant to several hospitals, he published papers on a variety of subjects in professional journals and was elected fellow (1864), and subsequently censor, vice-president (1882–4), and president (1884–6) of the (R)K&QCP(I); MRIA (1866); and senator of TCD and of the RUI, which awarded him an hon. LLD (1909). Knighted (1896), he was appointed physician-in-ordinary in Ireland to Edward VII (1901–10) and to George V (1910–12) and became DL of Co. Meath, where he was a landowner. Offered a baronetcy (1906), he declined the hereditary title in the interests of his younger sons.
Deeply religious and a classical scholar, he was an authority on Thomas à Kempis (1380–1471), thus earning the nickname ‘Kempis Cruise’, and wrote a biography, Thomas à Kempis (1887), and Who was the author of ‘The imitation of Christ’? (1898), and translated The imitation of Christ (1908) and several less well known works. Pope Pius X created him a knight of St Gregory the Great (1905), and a street in Kempen, Germany, was named after him. Other works include a short biography, Sir Dominic Corrigan, 1802–1880 (1912); a close friend, he attended Corrigan during his final illness, remaining constantly by his bedside during the last month of his life. A distinguished amateur musician, he played and composed for the cello, edited many classical works and Irish airs, and founded (1874) and was president of the Instrumental Music Club, which popularised chamber music in Dublin; he was elected a member (1870) of the governing committee of the (R)IAM and was subsequently elected a vice-president of the board of governors of the RIAM.
Modest and much respected for his goodness (he was associated with many charities and philanthropic works), as an old man he could be seen on the streets of Dublin in his small brougham, shrunken, white-bearded, bent low over an open book. He lived at 93 Merrion Square West, Dublin, died there 26 February 1912, and was buried in Glasnevin cemetery. To the Jesuit community in Gardiner St., Dublin, he bequeathed his finely carved crucifix and religious books.
He married (1859) Mary Frances Power (d. 1910); they had seven sons and three daughters. His son John Edward William Cruise became a doctor; David Thomas Joseph Sherlock (1881–1964), an appeal court judge in Jamaica, was his son-in-law, and Dom Cuthbert (Edward Joseph Aloysius) Butler (qv), Benedictine abbot and scholar, his nephew.