302 Britain's Heritage of Science 



was, for its time, one of the most inspiring of authoritative 

 books. Foster published many other books, all of them 

 remarkable for clear and scholarly diction and a real charm 

 of style, for, like so many men of science, Foster wrote the 

 purest English. The latest of all, " A History of Physiology 

 during the Sixteenth, Seventeenth, and Eighteenth Centuries," 

 has been of the greatest use in the compilation of these chapters. 

 In 1887 he founded the Journal of Physiology, the first of 

 its kind in the English language, and remained sole editor of 

 it till a few years before his death. 



His great organizing powers were shown in the foundation 

 of the Physiological Society and the International Congress 

 of Physiologists. As Secretary of the Royal Society, he 

 took a leading part in the establishment of the International 

 Association of Academies and the International Catalogue 

 of Scientific Papers. He was a member of numerous Royal 

 Commissions, and had to a marked extent the ear of the 

 Government. If Foster told the Treasury a certain thing 

 ought to be done, it usually was done. 



Amongst the most brilliant pupils of Foster was Walter 

 Holbrook Gaskell (1847-1914), a member of the well-known 

 Liverpool family to which Mrs. Gaskell the novelist also 

 belonged. Gaskell came up to Cambridge in 1865, as a 

 mathematician, at the unusually early age of 17 and some 

 months. Four years later he took his degree as twenty- 

 sixth wrangler. He then started to study medicine. A 

 year later he fell under the magnetism of Foster, and imme- 

 diately began a series of works which have made his name 

 one of the best known in the history of modern physiology. 



His work falls mainly under three heads. He began his 

 researches by studying the inner vation of blood vessels in 

 striated muscles, and was gradually carried on to the investi- 

 gation of the small arteries of the heart with varying reactions 

 of the blood. He found that small additions of alkali 

 increased their tone, and small additions of acid decreased 

 it, and he was one of the first to recognize that there is a 

 chemical control in the organs and tissues as well as a nervous 

 one. Later he turned his attention to the inner vation of 

 the heart and the cause of the heart beat. At that time it 

 was held that the nerve cells present in the tissues of the 



