ary and
subsequently for some time to Queen Elizabeth, he founded the famous
Caius College at Cambridge, usually called Key's College by
Cantabrigians.

Before either of these men there had been a third {95} distinguished
English physician who had gone down to Italy for his education. This
was the celebrated and learned John Phreas, who was born about the
commencement of the fifteenth century. Very little is known of his
career, but what we do know is of great interest. He was educated at
Oxford and obtained a fellowship on the foundation of Balliol College.
Afterward he seems to have studied medicine with a physician in
England, but was not satisfied with the medical education thus
obtained. He set the fashion for going down into Italy sometime during
the first half of the fifteenth century, and after some years spent at
Padua received the degree of doctor in medicine, which in those days
carried with it, as the name implies, the right to teach. As not
infrequently happens to the brilliant medical student, he settled down
for practice in the university town in which he graduated, to take up
both occupations, that of teacher and practitioner. He is said to have
made a large fortune in the practice of physic. [Footnote 12] The best
proof of his scholarship is to be found in some letters still
preserved in the Bodleian and in the Library of Balliol College.
Personally, I have considered that his career was interesting from
another standpoint. I have often looked in history for the cases of
appendicitis which occur so frequently in our day and with regard to
which people ask how is it they did not occur in the past. The fact
is, they did occur, but were unrecognized. People were taken suddenly
ill, not infrequently a short time after a meal, and after
considerable pain and fever, swelling and great tenderness in the
abdomen {96} developed, and they died with all the signs of poisoning.
They were actually poisoned, not by some extraneous material, but by
the putrid contents of their own intestines which found a way out
through the ruptured appendix. These cases were set down as poisoning
cases, and usually some interested person was the subject of
suspicion. Dr. Phreas's learning had obtained for him an appointment
to a bishopric in England, a curious bit of evidence of the absence of
opposition between medical science and religion in his time. He died
shortly after this, under circumstances that raised a suspicion of
poi