Sir Michael Foster. lxxull 
impressed upon his youthful mind the iunportance of experimental work in 
the study and teaching of physiology, so his intercourse and friendship with 
Huxley led him to take the broadest views of the meaning of physiology, 
strengthened his biological bias, and was, perhaps, the chief cause of his life- 
long effort to place physiology at the head of the group of biological sciences. 
On the Continent at this time, experimental research in physiology was 
much more universal in the laboratories than in England, but there, too, the 
instruction was mainly given by lectures, with demonstrations during the 
lectures; there was no organised system of practical instruction. 
_ The practical course of physiology and histology, inaugurated by Sharpey, 
which he gave over entirely into the hands of Foster, retaining for himself 
the theoretical part of the teaching, was unique in Great Britain at that time, 
and to it must be traced the emancipation of physiology from the bonds of 
human anatomy. The time had come when physiology was to take its true 
place in the annals of science and the experimental method, the only true 
way of advancing. scientific knowledge, to attain by leaps and bounds its 
present high position in Great Britain; the man alone was required, and that 
man was Foster. 
As is so frequently the case in scientific advance, the initiative came from 
the University of Cambridge, not indeed from the University itself, for that 
is a body ill provided with funds and slow to act, but from Trinity College. 
The original suggestion came apparently from George Eliot and George Henry 
Lewes, who were great friends of W. G. Clark. He and Coutts Trotter felt, 
and persuaded the College, that the time had come when it would be of 
advantage to the University for separate teaching in Physiology to be. given. 
They therefore approached Huxley and asked him to help them; he replied 
without hesitation, “I know the very man for you, a young fellow at 
University College called Foster.” 
So Foster came to Cambridge as Trinity Preelector jof Physiology, not 
belonging to the University but in it. As far as the University was con- 
cerned he had no status, no vote in the Senate, for though an “Hon. M.A. 
degree was conferred upon him in 1871, it did not in those days carry with 
it any of the privileges of the ordinary M.A. degree. He was ineligible for 
election to any Board of Studies, could therefore only make his voice felt in 
the University through his friends. 
The University granted one small room, now part of the Philosophical 
Library, to the Trinity Prelector of Physiology. Here Foster began his 
lectures, and here was at first his only laboratory for histology, chemical and 
experimental physiology. He brought with him, from London, H. Newell 
Martin as his demonstrator. 
From this small beginning arose the whole Biological School of Cambridge. 
Foster’s teaching was a revelation: it was all new, not to be found in any 
English text-book, all so suggestive, opening out vistas of research, showing 
how little was known, how much remained to be found out. | 
_Up to that time Humphry, who was Professor of Anatomy and Physiology, 
