T. Addison, W. Bowman, M. Foster 301 



neglected under Professor Sir George Humphry, Professor 

 Clark, and others, but Foster brought with him new methods 

 and new conceptions. Owing to the religious tests demanded 

 in those times by the older Universities, Foster had been 

 educated at the University College, London, and after 

 practising as a country doctor for a very few years, he 

 became a teacher in Practical Physiology at his old College, 

 and in 1869 he was elected Professor in succession to Sharpey. 

 He also succeeded Huxley as Fullerian Professor at the Royal 

 Institution. For twenty-two years he acted as Biological 

 Secretary to the Royal Society, and in 1899 he presided over 

 the British Association at their meeting at Dover, in which 

 year he was created a K.C.B. In the year 1900 he was 

 elected M.P. for the University of London, but lost his seat 

 six years later by the small majority of twenty-four votes; 

 it makes one shudder to recall that a man of such outstanding 

 merit should have said : " Not till I became a Member of 

 Parliament did I understand what power meant." 



When the new Statutes came in at Cambridge, a Pro- 

 fessorship of Physiology was established, in 1883, and Foster 

 was the first to hold it. He did but little in original research, 

 but was the cause of a vast amount of research in others. 

 Still he was to some extent a pioneer in the study of Histology 

 and introduced the staining of sections with log-wood or 

 haematoxylin. He was notable as a teacher, and founded 

 one of the finest Schools of Physiology that has ever existed. 

 He was a brilliant writer and a masterly organiser, and 

 undoubtedly one of the best lecturers and after-dinner 

 speakers in the last quarter of the nineteenth century. 



On arriving in Cambridge he introduced courses of 

 practical demonstrations modelled on those which Huxley 

 was carrying on at about the same time in London, and from 

 the first he was surrounded by a brilliant group of students, 

 amongst whom were Balfour (see page 284), Walter Gaskell, 

 Sheridan Lee, J. N. Langley, Newall Martin, Sherrington, 

 George Adami, Henry Head, and many others. Foster's 

 text-book of Physiology, the first edition of which appeared 

 in 1876 and was followed by five others, was a classic, and, 

 although in so changing a subject, it was almost impossible 

 to keep pace with the advances of a growing science, it 



