There was a pause here, and Mr. Professor Ward asked my master if it was true that Linacre had, in the latter part of his life, changed his profession, and entered into the priesthood.
Mead. “Yes, it was undoubtedly true, but he still to his dying day had his thoughts upon physic, for it was towards the close of his life that he projected the College of Physicians, of which he remained President till his death. It was also true that, on first applying himself to the study of divinity, he was a most sincere searcher of the Scriptures, studying the Bible with great avidity; and that on reading the 5th, 6th, and 7th chapters of St. Matthew, he threw the book away, and swore that this was either not the Gospel, or we were not Christians.”
Freind. “Your account of Linacre is quite correct, and you have certainly not passed upon him a greater eulogium than he deserves. If any other example were required to prove to the world how much some of the members of our body have done to further the cause of learning, there is one very ready to be cited in the physician to whom we owe the compilation of the first annals of our College. Though an Englishman, we find Dr. Caius reading lectures on Aristotle in the university of Padua; and afterwards using the influence he possessed at court, where he was Physician to Queen Mary, in behalf of literature: for it was at his instance that a licence was obtained from the Queen to advance Gonvil-hall at Cambridge, and incorporate it under the name of Gonvil and Caius College. This College he endowed afterwards with considerable estates for the maintenance of an additional number of fellows and scholars. He was Fellow, Censor, and President of the London College; and even in advanced life never absented himself from our meetings without a dispensation. He was buried in the Chapel of the College he had founded at Cambridge; and the simple inscription upon his monument, while it records the date of his death, adds a sentiment which should reconcile us to the frail and doubtful tenure of our present existence, by the certainty and permanence of well-merited posthumous fame:—
‘Fui Caius. Vivit post funera virtus. Obiit 1573, Æt. 63.’”
Mead. “The zeal displayed by Caius in the cause of literature deserves every commendation, but it is perhaps more to our purpose to dwell upon the claim he has upon our grateful remembrance as the founder of the Science of Anatomy in England. According to the fashion of his day, he had gone abroad in pursuit of knowledge; at Padua had lived during eight months in the same house with Vesalius, and devoted himself with the same ardour to the studies of his celebrated companion: and let it never be forgotten that Caius, on his return from Italy, imbued with the spirit of inquiry and enlightened by the lamp of science lately kindled in that country, taught Anatomy to the Surgeons in their own Hall. Here, beyond the precincts of the College of Physicians, reflecting great honour upon that body, adding to his own reputation and conferring no small advantage on the Surgeons, he laid that solid foundation for the study of Anatomy, to which may easily be traced the glory and after discoveries of Harvey. Caius began to lecture to the Surgeons soon after their incorporation (1540), and continued to do so, for twenty years, even after he had been elected President of our College and appointed Physician to the Court. The privilege which about this time had been granted to the Surgeons of obtaining annually four bodies of executed felons for the purpose of dissection, was doubtless the cause why the Hall of the Surgeons was selected for the lectures of Caius: for when in 1564 a similar permission was allowed to the Physicians by Queen Elizabeth, anatomical prælections were held at their own College. Dissections now began to be made frequently here, and the year before the death of Caius, an order is registered in our Annals that three bodies should be procured at the expense of the College, two sectionis experiundi causâ, and the third to be made ‘a public anatomy of.’ But it is not only by reference to our Annals that it appears to have been the merit of Caius to have given the first impulse to these studies, for the fact is mentioned by contemporary writers.—William Bulleine, M. D., in a very curious book[22], published in 1579, enumerates among the cunning men, profitable to the commonwealth, the learned Doctor, M. John Kaius, as the first who taught by learned lectures and the secrete anothomies, the worthy fraternity of Chirurgeons, of the most ancient and famous city of London.”
Dr. Freind. “I have not lately, as you all know, had an opportunity of consulting any books, but I recollect, some time ago, having obtained permission to examine the early volumes of our Annals, and being much struck with the importance attached to the study of anatomy by our ancestors, and the labour and assiduity with which they appear to have cultivated that science. If my memory does not fail me, it was in 1581, about eight years after the death of Caius, that a Lecture on Anatomy was regularly founded and endowed at the College. It was in that year that the Lord Lumley and Dr. Caldwall, signified their benefactions for that purpose, and the College to show itself worthy of the liberality of those generous patrons, though possessing very scanty funds, immediately voted all the money in their treasurer’s hands to enlarge their building, render it more suitable to their meetings, and more convenient for the delivery of these public lectures. Their poor stock, it would seem, amounted only to £100, but it must always be kept in mind that the funds of our body have never been replenished out of the coffers of the state, but have been furnished solely by the occasional donations of private individuals, or the legacies and contributions of its own members. In the time of the Protectorate their treasury was at its lowest ebb, and yet it is a subject of pride that even then the ardour of its members for anatomical research was unabated, for it was during this period that Glisson, whom your friend Boerhaave calls the ‘most accurate of anatomists,’ published his Lectures on the Structure of the Liver, dedicating his work to the University of Cambridge, ornatissimoque Medicorum Londinensium Collegio, thus avoiding, you observe, all allusion to the regal character of our foundation. But what wonder, when the sour and crabbed Republicans of those days were so cautious on this head, that in reciting the Lord’s Prayer, they would not say—‘Thy kingdom come,’ but always ‘Thy commonwealth come.’—To return however to the Lumleian Lectures, two years after their endowment, the College built a spacious Anatomical Theatre in Knight Rider Street, and here Harvey must have given his first public demonstrations of the circulation of the blood, for he was elected Reader[23] in Anatomy in 1615. The mention of Caius, Harvey, and Glisson, suggests the names of the other great anatomists of that age; and it cannot fail to strike us as a matter of wonder and admiration, that all the important discoveries in Physiology were made in a very short space of time. In the fifty years which elapsed from 1620 to 1670, greater strides were made in enlarging our knowledge of the functions of the living animal body, than had ever been made before, or will probably ever be made again. For reflect only, that in this interval the brilliant discoveries of the circulation of the blood, of the nature of respiration, of the curious system of vessels called lacteals, as well as of that to which the general name of absorbents has been given, took place. In fact the means by which we live and breathe, by which our bodies are nourished, grow, change, and finally decay, were for the first time pointed out and explained.
“In 1622, Aselli discovered the Lacteals.
“In 1628, Harvey published his Doctrine of the Circulation of the Blood.
“In 1647, The Thoracic Duct and Receptaculum Chyli were pointed out by Pecquet.