American surgeon who made notable contributions to the study of surgical shock.

He graduated from Ohio Northern University and Wooster University Medical School and studied in London, Vienna, and Paris. He was distinguished as a surgeon of the respiratory system, developed nerve-block anesthesia, and was an early user of blood transfusion, for which he devised a method of direct linkage. During World War I, Crile was professional director of a U.S. base hospital in France. He also founded the Cleveland Clinic Foundation.

Crile's numerous works include An Experimental Research into Surgical Shock (1899); Blood-Pressure in Surgery (1903); and Hemorrhage and Transfusion (1909).