In 1811 he graduated as a doctor of medicine and a doctor of philosophy. In 1814 he was appointed professor of obstetrics and director of the maternity clinic at the teaching institution for medicine and surgery in
Dresden. He wrote on art theory. From 1814 to 1817 he taught himself oil painting working under
Caspar David Friedrich, a
Dresden landscape painter. Subsequently, he studied under
Julius Schnorr von Carolsfeld at the
Oeser drawing academy. When the King of Saxony,
Frederick Augustus II, made an informal tour of Britain in 1844, Carus accompanied him as his personal physician. It was not a state visit, but the King, with Carus, was the guest of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert at Windsor Castle, and Carus was able to visit many of the sights in London and the university cities of Oxford and Cambridge, and meet others active in the field of scientific discoveries. They toured widely in England, Wales and Scotland, and afterwards Carus published, on the basis of his journal, ''The King of Saxony's Journey through England and Scotland, 1844''. He is best known to scientists for originating the concept of the
vertebrate archetype, a
seminal idea in the development of
Darwin's theory of
evolution. In 1836, he was elected a foreign member of the
Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. Carus is also noted for
Psyche (1846). He developed a theory of landscape painting whose objective was the visualisation of the inner workings of geological phenomena, which he called "Erdlebenbildkunst" (pictorial art of the life of the earth).
Carl Jung credited Carus with pointing to the
unconscious as the essential basis of the
psyche. :Although various philosophers, among them
Leibniz,
Kant, and
Schelling, had already pointed very clearly to the problem of the dark side of the psyche, it was a physician who felt impelled, from his scientific and medical experience, to point to the
unconscious as the essential basis of the psyche. This was C. G. Carus, the authority whom
Eduard von Hartmann followed. (Jung [1959] 1969, par. 259) Carus died in Dresden. He is buried in the Trinitatis-Friedhof (Trinitatis Cemetery) east of the city centre. The grave lies in the south-west section, against the southern wall. ==Family==