CAIUS, KAYE, or KEYE, Dr JOHN

CAIUS, KAYE, or KEYE, Dr JOHN, the founder of Caius College in Cambridge, was born at Norwich in 1510. He was admitted while very young a student in Gonville Hall in the above-mentioned university. From his exercises performed there it seems probable that he intended to prosecute the study of divinity. He travelled into Italy, and at Padua studied under the celebrated Montanus; and in 1541 took his degree in physic at Bologna. In 1543 he visited several parts of Italy, Germany, and France; and returning to England, he began to practise first at Cambridge, then at Shrewsbury, and afterwards at Norwich. He removed to London in 1547, and was admitted fellow of the college of physicians, of which he was several years president. In 1557, being then physician to Queen Mary, he obtained a license to advance Gonville Hall into a college, and he endowed it with several considerable estates, adding an entire new square at the expense of £1,834. Of this college he accepted the mastership, which he held till within a short period of his death. He was physician to Edward VI., Queen Mary, and Queen Elizabeth. Towards the latter end of his life he retired to his own college at Cambridge, where having resigned the mastership to Dr Leggie of Norwich, he spent the remainder of his life as a fellow commoner. He died in July 1573, and was buried in the chapel of his own college. Dr Caius was a learned, active, and benevolent man. In 1557 he erected a monument in St Paul's to the memory of Linacre. In 1563 he obtained a grant for the college of physicians to take the bodies of two malefactors annually for dissection; and he was the inventor of the insignia which distinguish the president from the rest of the fellows.

He wrote, 1. Annals of the College from 1555 to 1572. 2. Translation of several of Galen's works, printed at different times abroad. 3. Hippocrates de Medicamentis; first discovered and published by Dr Caius; also De Ratione Vitus, Lond. 1558, 8vo. 4. De Medendi Methodo, Baile, 1554; Lond. 1556, 8vo. 5. Account of the Sweating Sickness in England, Lond. 1556, 1721. It is entitled De Ephemera Britannica. 6. History of the University of Cambridge, Lond. 1568, 8vo; 1574, 4to, in Latin. 7. De Thermis Britannicis; but it is doubtful whether this work was ever printed. 8. Of some Rare Plants and Animals, Lond. 1570. 9. De Canibus Britannicis, 1570, 1729. 10. De Pronunciacione Graeca et Latinae Linguae, Lond. 1574. 11. De Libris propriis, Lond. 1570. Besides many other works which never were printed.