Sir Michael Foster. lxxvil 
necessary piece of apparatus. Dew Smith saw that here he could greatly 
help Foster and physiology, and so he started in Cambridge a workshop 
expressly to turn out anything required in scientific laboratories as quickly 
as possible, to which was afterwards added a drawing and lithographic 
establishment. This workshop, the foundation of which was indirectly due 
to Foster, has been a great boon to science, especially in its later development 
as the Cambridge Scientific Instrument Company. 
- Foster held very strongly the opinion that science was cosmopolitan, that 
all workers in physiology should be banded together in one brotherhood—the 
brotherhood of science; the practical carrying out of this belief manifested 
itself in two ways, both of which have been very fruitful and of great benefit 
to English physiologists. In the first place, when he started the ‘ Journal of 
Physiology,’ he determined to obtain American as well as English co-operation, 
and on the title-page of the first number appear the names of Bowditch, 
Martin, and Wood, as well as of Gamgee, Rutherford, and Sanderson. 
In the second place, when the International Medical Congress met in 
London in 1881 he and Kronecker together drew up a scheme for a separate 
International Congress of Physiologists to meet every three years, and a 
Committee was formed. The first Congress was held at Basel in 1889 and 
they have been held with great success every three years since that date. 
Their success is largely attributable to Foster’s powerful influence, always 
exercised and repeatedly emphasised to make the proceedings demonstra- 
tional, to the exclusion of papers and to make the social proceedings as 
cheap and informal as possible. 
In 1872 he was elected a fellow and in 1881 he succeetled Huxley as one 
of the-secretaries of the Royal Society, a post which he held until he 
resigned it in 1903. During these twenty-two years Foster’s influence in the 
world of science was very great indeed; he became personally acquainted 
with the leading men of science of every department, and with his broad- 
minded scientific spirit he set himself to further and aid scientific progress 
in every direction; thus apart from purely biological subjects he took an 
active part in the establishment of the National Physical Laboratory, in the 
rearrangement of the Meteorological Office, and in starting the International 
Congress of Geodesy. In 1897 he was president of the physiological section 
of the British Association at Toronto and in 1899 he was President of the 
Association at the Dover meeting. 
Perhaps his most important work as Secretary was the establishing of 
close, confidential, and frequent relations between the Royal Society and 
Government Departments. Foster believed this to be to the advantage both 
of the country and of the Society ; many of the Society disagreed with him 
strongly on this point; whether right or wrong in his judgment he carried 
that policy through until the Society had become expert adviser to a number 
of Government departments as a routine thing. These departments placed 
great confidence in Foster and in numberless cases he stood with them for 
the Royal Society itself. The way in which the Government departments 
re 
