Sir Philip Crampton

was a pupil of Solomon Richards (1758-1819) in Dublin. He was Staff Assistant-Surgeon at the time of the French invasion in 1798 and before he had turned 21 years of age, became a surgeon to the Meath Hospital. With Peter Harkan he established a private school of anatomy and surgery in Dublin. Peter Harkan took charge of the anatomical department, while Crampton taught physiology, pathology and surgery.

Crampton also became surgeon to the Lock Hospital, but ended this position when he was appointed Surgeon General to the Forces in Ireland. He was also Surgeon in Ordinary to the King and was made a Baronet in 1839.

Besides medicine, Crampton also took a keen interest in zoology. His works in this field earned him membership of the Royal Society. He was also several times president of the Zoological Society and the Council of the College of Surgeons

When he died in 1858 he had been retired for some years.

In 1813 Crampton published a paper in volume 1 of Thomas Thomson's (1773-1852) Annals of Philosophy: or Magazine of chemistry, mineralogy, mechanics, natural history, agriculture, and the arts, London, describing the organ in the eyes of birds used for accommodation, now known as Musculus Cramptonianus, or Crampton's muscle.

• An essay on the entropeon, or inversion of the eyelids.
  London, 1805. 2nd edition 1896.
• An account of a new method of operating for the cure of external aneurism; . . . . experiments illustrative of the effects of the different methods of procuring the obliteration arteries.
  Medico-Chirurgical Transactions, London, 1816, VII.
• Th. Goodisson:
  Beobachtungen einer verschlossenen Aorte, mitgetheilt von Crampton: Dublin Hospital reports u. s. w., Dublin 1818, p. 194 ff.
  Deutsches Archiv für die Physiologie, Halle and Berlin, 1820, 6: 208-215.
• August Hirsch, publisher:
  Biographisches Lexikon der hervorragenden Ärzte aller Zeiten und Völker.
  Urban & Schwarzenberg. 2nd edition. Berlin, 1929. Volume 2, page 137.