John Caius

John Caius (born John Kays ; 6 October 1510 – 29 July 1573), also known as Johannes Caius and Ioannes Caius, was an English physician, second founder of Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, scholar, and physician to Edward VI and Mary I.

Biography

Early years Caius was born in Norwich and was educated at Norwich School. In 1529, he was admitted as a student at Gonville Hall, Cambridge, founded by Edmund Gonville in 1348, where he seems to have mainly studied divinity.

After graduating in 1533, he visited Italy, where he studied under Montanus and Vesalius at Padua. In 1541 he took his degree as a physician at the University of Padua.

In 1543 he visited several parts of Italy, Germany and France and then returned to England. Upon his return from Italy he Latinised his surname which was somewhat fashionable at the time.

Career

Caius was a physician in London in 1547, and was admitted as a fellow of the College of Physicians, of which he was for many years president.

In 1557 Caius, at that time physician to Queen Mary, enlarged the foundation of his old college, changed the name from "Gonville Hall" to "Gonville and Caius College", and endowed it with several considerable estates, adding an entire new court at the expense of £1,834 . He accepted the mastership of the college 24 January 1559 on the death of Thomas Bacon, and held it until about a month before his own death.

Legacy

Caius was a learned, active and benevolent man. In 1557 he erected a monument in St Paul's Cathedral to the memory of Thomas Linacre. In 1564, he obtained a grant for Gonville and Caius College to take the bodies of two malefactors annually for dissection; he was thus an important pioneer in advancing the science of anatomy. He probably devised, and certainly presented, the silver caduceus now in the possession of Caius College as part of its insignia. He first gave it to the College of Physicians, and afterwards presented the London College with another. Caius' Catholic religious convictions did not prevent his friendship with the Protestant Gesner (indeed, the Historiae Animalium, to which Caius contributed, was under Pope Paul IV placed on the Roman Catholic Church's list of prohibited books).

His last literary production was a history of Cambridge University, Historia Cantabrigiensis Academiae (London, 1574).