On a typical weekday afternoon in the waiting rooms of Dr. Manus C. Kraff, the din is like that at a hot River North eatery on Saturday night. There are as many as 75 people, mostly older patients with their younger friends and relatives accompanying them, talking and laughing and gossiping. Some have been waiting for hours.
On another morning, Kraff struts back and forth outside two operating rooms between a huge stainless steel sink and a soap machine, washing and rinsing his hands at least ten times. In a few moments he will begin a ritual dance between two operating rooms. While he operates in one with one set of assistants, another group readies a patient in the other.
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Very few of his detractors have anything negative to say about his surgical abilities, his dedication, or his skills as a clinical professor of ophthalmology at Northwestern. Since the early 1970s, when he traveled to India and saw doctors performing scores of cataract surgeries in one day, he has been driven to perfect his skills, to become known as the Mr. Cataract of Chicago.
