Background

Caius was born John Kays on October 6, 1510, in Norwich, England, the son of Robert and Alice Caius.

Education

After preparatory studies in Norwich, John entered Gonville Hall, Cambridge, in 1529. He was graduated in 1533 and received the Master of Arts degree in 1535. Thereafter he studied medicine and in 1539 transferred to the University of Padua, where he received the Doctor of Medicine degree on 13 May 1541.

Career

Despite his anatomical training under the iconoclastic Vesalius, with whom he lived for eight months in Padua, Caius firmly believed that once Galen’s writings had been properly reconstructed, they would make medical research unnecessary. An excellent Greek scholar, Caius sought to contribute to the corpus Galenicum, and in the summer of 1542 began an extensive trip through Italy, studying the Galenic manuscripts in the principal libraries. He returned to England in 1545 by way of Switzerland and then Germany and Belgium. The first results of his investigations were two books published in Basel in 1544: Libri aliquot Graeci, a collection of emendated Greek texts of Galen’s writings, notably the hitherto unpublished first book of the Concordance of Plato and Hippocrates, the Anatomical Procedures, and the Movement of Muscles; and Methodus medendi, a general work on medical treatment based on the doctrines of Galen and Giambattista da Monte, Caius’s professor of clinical medicine at Padua. A number of emendated Greek texts and Latin translations of Galenic and Hippocratic writings, products of Caius’s further studies after his return to England, were published under the titles Galeni de tuenda valetudine (Basel, 1549), Opera aliquot et versiones (Louvain, 1556), and Galeni Pergameni libri (Basel. 1557).

On 22 December 1547 Caius was admitted to the College of Physicians of London, of which he soon became a fellow and, in 1550, an elect. In 1555 he was chosen president, an office to which he was reelected for the ninth and final time in 1571. He was a strict disciplinarian who sought not only to strengthen the power of the college in its control of medical licensing in London but also to extend that control over all England. Although he was not always successful, nevertheless he did gain a greater respect for the profession of medicine in England; and in 1569 the college was able to force the powerful Lord Burghley to agree to banishment of a quack he had been shielding and to declare that he held no animosity against the college and “had the highest opinion of all the Fellows.” As part of his well-intended but frequently strongly opposed efforts to raise the level of medical education in England, Caius sought to prevent the universities of Oxford and Cambridge from granting medical degrees to those of dubious ability. It was also through the urgings of Caius that in 1565 the College of Physicians, like the United Company of Barber-Surgeons in 1540, was annually awarded by the crown the bodies of four executed criminals for anatomical demonstration; his old college at Cambridge received two.

Meanwhile, in 1546, Caius had been appointed anatomical demonstrator to the Company of Barber Surgeons, a position that he held for seventeen years, during which time he made notable contributions to the development of this basic science in England. About the beginning of 1548 he began the practice of medicine in London and was appointed physician, successively, to Edward VI, Queen Mary and Queen Elizabeth. His services also were frequently demanded outside London by the nobility and gentry, and it was on the occasion of such a visit to Shrewsbury in 1551 that he observed the ravages of the “sweating sickness,” possibly a form of influenza, in its fifth outbreak in England. The result was his "Boke or counseill against the disease called the sweate" (1552), a minor classic of medical literature and the first original description of a disease to be written in England and in English. Caius studied the history of “the sweat,” established a diagnosis and was able to prove the disease quite unlike that of any earlier epidemic, described its course, and provided primitive statistics on the mortality rates. Despite his dislike of the use of the vernacular, in this instance he believed that the seriousness of the pestilence required him to reach as wide a public as possible. Later he wrote in Latin on the same subject for the medical profession: De ephemera Britannica, published in his Opera aliquot et versiones (1556).

The remainder of Caius’s published works were either composed or printed toward the end of his life. De rariorum animalium atque stirpium historia (1570), a description of fauna and flora that came to his attention in and around London, was originally composed for inclusion in Conrad Gesner’s Historia animalium but omitted by reason of the latter’s death. It appeared with De canibus Britannicis, likewise originally intended for Gesner’s work, and De libris suis, Caius’s literary autobiography. Caius also emendated or translated into Latin other Greek medical texts that, however, remained unpublished and are now known only through his references to them in De libris suis. He also refers there to an unpublished work on the baths of England, De thermis Britannicis, the earliest treatise of its kind. His record of the College of Physicians of London from 1518 to 1572, Annalium Collegii medicorum Londini liber, was first published in 1912.

In 1557 Caius was empowered by letters patent to refound his old college at Cambridge as Gonville and Caius College. He accepted its mastership in 1559 and provided large benefactions for rebuilding. Nevertheless his position became untenable because he had remained faithful to Catholicism, and he resigned in June 1573. He died at his London house, in St Bartholomew's Hospital, on 29 July 1573, but his body was brought to Cambridge, and buried in the chapel under the monument which he had designed.

Achievements

• Caius is best remembered for his classic account of the English sweating sickness, which is considered one of the earliest histories of an epidemic. He was 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.
  
  

Works

Works Gallery

• book

  • Joannis Caii Britanni de Canibus Britannicis, Liber Unus; ... de Pronunciatione Græcæ & Latinæ Linguæ, Cum Scriptione Nova, Libellus; Ad Optimorum

    (The 18th century was a wealth of knowledge, exploration a...)

    1574
  • The Annals of Gonville and Caius College
  • The Sweating Sickness A boke or counseill against the disease commonly called the sweate or sweatyng sicknesse 1552
  • Of Englishe Dogges: The Diuersities, the Names, the Natures, and the Properties 1576

Connections

father:

Robert Caius - British

mother:

Alice Caius - British

friend:

Conrad Gessner - Swiss - bibliographer , naturalist , philologist , physician

He compiled monumental works on bibliography and zoology and was working on a major botanical text at the time of his death from plague at the age of 49. He is regarded as the father of modern scientific bibliography, zoology and botany.

References

• A Comprehensive History of Norwich
  1869
• Dogs: Their History and Development
  1927