Page:The Harveian oration - delivered at the Royal College of Physicians, London, June 29th, 1867 (IA b22315263).pdf/8

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6
CAIUS.

If we refer once more to the terms of the foundation, we perceive that it is still our proper duty thankfully to bear in mind the more ancient of the benefactors, such as Linacre, Caius, Lord Lumley, and also Gulston: all these left property for foundations connected with the College. We will dwell on them only to bestow a brief tribute to the merit of Caius. Not only distinguished as one of the earliest Greek scholars, and as having given to the profession the first correct editions of Galen and Celsus, he was also the first to introduce and teach practical anatomy. It was he who began the Annals of the College, kept them in Latin, and set in order the finances. And his munificent re-endowment of Gonville Hall at Cambridge, was marked by especial reference to the faculty of medicine. It is a grateful task to vindicate the fame of a great man from the aspersions of intervening generations. Caius lived in a persecuting age, whilst mutual repression was still rampant between religious partisans, and whilst it was thought equally legitimate to resort to violence in the case of