Caius, DR JOHN

Caius, DR JOHN, physician and scholar, was born at Norwich in 1510. (Caius, pronounced Keys, is probably a Latinised form of the English name Kaye or Key.) He entered Gonville Hall, Cambridge, in 1529, and in 1533 was elected a fellow thereof, having just before been appointed principal of Fiswick's Hostel. In 1539 he went abroad, in 1541 was created an M.D. of Padua; returning to England in 1544, he delivered lectures on anatomy in London, then practised at Shrewsbury and Norwich. In 1547 he was admitted a fellow of the College of Physicians, of which he was subsequently nine times elected president. He also became physician to Edward VI., Queen Mary, and Queen Elizabeth. In 1557 he obtained permission to elevate Gonville Hall into a college, which took the name of Gonville and Caius College, and of which in 1559 he became master. A loyal Catholic, he had great trouble with his Protestant fellows, who burned his mass vestments, and whom in return he put in the stocks. He died 29th July 1573. He was author of A Boke or Counsell against the Sweatynge Sickness (1552), and of ten other published works on a variety of subjects, critical, antiquarian, and scientific.