With the outbreak of hostilities during the American Revolution, Craik joined the Revolutionary forces. He served as an army surgeon, ultimately advancing to the second-highest post in army medicine. Craik warned Washington about the plots of the Conway Cabal, and treated the wounds of General Hugh Mercer at the Battle of Princeton and Gilbert du Motier, Marquis de La Fayette at the Battle of Brandywine. At the conclusion of the war, Craik was admitted as an original member of The Society of the Cincinnati of Maryland. He also had a town house at 117 South Fairfax Street, 209 Prince Street, and then 210 Duke Street. As Washington's personal physician, Craik was one of three doctors to attend on him during his final illness on 14 December 1799. Washington's condition continued to deteriorate, but Craik and Brown decided against Dick's suggestion of a tracheotomy (which might have been lifesaving, but likely would have spread the infection and caused sepsis), and Washington died at 10:10 p.m. Craik died in Alexandria in 1814; he is buried in the graveyard of the Old Presbyterian Meeting House in that city. The available biographical account does not describe a continuous final medical course. It gives no dependable sequence of treatment and last symptoms from which to reconstruct a more detailed bedside narrative.