Beside the grave benefactors of the hospital we hear of serio-comic personages who remind us of the curious lunatics recorded by de Morgan in his Budget of Paradoxes. Thus in 1774 Mr W. Gardiner offered £2000 to St Bartholomew’s “as a sacrifice for God’s having put it in his power to overturn Sir Isaac Newton’s system” (ii., p. 245).
From 1547 the treasurer was “a very important officer, but the president also took an active part in the affairs of the hospital.” But now the treasurer is the responsible head of the administration.
In 1518 the College of Physicians was founded by Henry VIII. (ii., p. 408) on the advice of Dr Thomas Linacre. Its active existence began in his house in Knightrider Street. The most pious and the most learned men of England were Linacre’s intimate friends, and the “example of his life, as felt in the College of Physicians, continues a living force to this day” (ii., p. 411).
Dr John Caius (ii., p. 412) was a devoted follower of Linacre; he was born 1510, went to Cambridge in 1529, and in 1533 was elected Fellow of Gonville Hall. In 1539 he went to Padua, where Vesalius, the founder of modern anatomy, was Professor. In 1547 Caius was admitted a Fellow of the College of Physicians, and not long after he came to live within St Bartholomew’s Hospital.
Caius wrote on the sweating sickness in 1552, and his work was printed near St Bartholomew’s. “Thus
were the proofs of the first medical monograph in the English tongue, and, indeed, the first book written by an English physician . . . on a particular disease, corrected in St Bartholomew’s” (ii., p. 418).
Caius was in 1555 elected President of the College of Physicians, to which he presented their silver caduceus with four serpents at its head, a book of statutes, and a seal. In 1557–69 he was engaged in the refoundation and building at Cambridge of what was to be known as Gonville and Caius College. On his death his viscera were buried in St Bartholomew’s the Less, while the rest of his body was placed in an alabaster tomb in the chapel of his college with the inscription: “Fui Caius.”
We meet with many proofs of the consideration shown by the authorities towards the patients. For instance (ii., p. 279):—
13th March 1568.—“This day it is graunted by the courte that Griffen Davye shall departe forthwith into his countrye, and also that he shall have 20s. in his purse to bringe him home in consideracion that he is lame and impotent.”
Again (ii., p. 293), “30th April 1597.—Ordered that curtaynes be provided for certain beds of the poor.” The author adds that “moveable curtains hang over the beds to this day, and are of great use in providing privacy when patients are washing and dressing.”