In memoriam : Sir Michael Foster / W.H. Gaskell.

  • Gaskell, Walter Holbrook, 1847-1914.
Date:
[1907]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: In memoriam : Sir Michael Foster / W.H. Gaskell. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    IN MEMORIAM. SIR MICHAEL FOSTER. The month of October, in the year 1870, marks an epoch in the history of the University, for at that time Michael Foster came to Cambridge and a new era of scientific activity began. He was not invited here by the University, no new professorship was founded, but his advent was due to the far-sightedness and liberality of Trinity College which saw ihat the time had come for a sepai-ate teacher in physiology. Up to then Professor Humphiy, who held the post of Professor of Anatomy and Physiology, had given a course of lectures on [diysiology as well as on anatomy, and had made the first small beginning of any practical instruction in the subject by exhibiting a number of microscopical preparations on a few evenings in the year. Trinity College, in the person I believe of W. G. Clark, approached Huxley and asked his advice. He immediately, without hesitation, answered: ‘ I know the very man for you, a young fellow of the name of Foster, at University College.’ Poster consented to come and started his teaching here as Trinity Praelector in Physiology, uurecoguised by the University, living, as he said, in it but not of it. Not being a member of the electoral roll he had no direct influence on its boards of studies, no vote in its senate. Yet his influence quickly made itself felt, for, as I well remember, but few days passed on which Coutis Trotter, Henry Sidgwick, J. W. Clark, and later on Prank Balfour, did not come in to his private room to talk over some of the questions of the day and thus through them he was able to give effect to his ideas. This anomalous condition of things lasted for thirteen years, until, as the result of the Royal Commission of 1881, a chair of physiology was founded in 1883 and Foster appointed as the first professor. The magnitude of Foster’s work can be appreciated only by recalling the position of Physiology and indeed of the biological sciences when lie first came. Physiology was looked upon entirely as a medical subject, and was taught solely by means of lectures. Save at University College where Foster’s teacher, Sharpey, kept it alive, physiology throughout Great Britain was a dead subject. In Cambridge itself Botany was limited almost completely to the study of external form There was nn herbarium but no laboratory. Comparative Anatomy was without a laboratory and was limited to such teaching as museum specimens could afford. Foster came imbued with the ideas of his great teachers Sharpey and Huxley. Pull of enthusiasm for his subject, not as a part of medical learning but as a portion of the great science of biology, he came with the full determination, as I remember his saying to me, of making the Cambridge biological school the foremost school in the British Empire The completeness with which he realised his aim is now matter of common knowledge. To the half dozen of us who attended his first course of lectures they came as a revelation. The charm of his manner, the clearness of his argument, and the absolute novelty of what he taught, for there was nothing at all like it in the books, combined to produce an impression on my mind, and on that of all of us, that here was a lecturer greater than any we had ever known, a subject worthy of the letiturer, and a man whose disciple one was constrained to be. In those early days, when the number of students was small, so great was the spell of his personality that man after man was willing to devote himself to the cause which Poster had so much at heart without thought of payment or position. Thus, with the hearty co-operation of Professor Newton, Foster was enabled to start a new department of morphology under Balfour, of botany under Vines and Frank Darwin, and separate physiological departments of physiological chemistry under Lea, and of histology under Langley. Well do I remember Foster discussing with Balfour his future career. Taking an egg he showed him the embryo inside and suggested to him that here was a subject \vell worth investigation. In 1870 the University gave one of two small rooms which are now merged in the Philosophical Library. The other room was used by the Professor of Sanscrit. How we longed for that room ! and what tricks we students, unknown to Foster, devised in oi'der to obtain it! Six years later the importance of the work was recognised by the University in a Grace, passed March 30, 1876, which recommended the erection of rooms for Comparative Anatomy and Physiology at a cost of .£8,750. Owing to various accidental delays the buildings were actually opened only in 1879. Poster’s influence was by no means confined to England. Always keenly alive to the brotherhood of science, and desirous of joining together in one friendly community all workers in physiology of whatever nation, he mooted the idea of an International Congress of Physiologists in 1888. The suggestion was warmly taken up in Germany, and the first Congress was held at Basle in 1889. Foster was greatly liked by foreign physiologists. At the Inter- national Congress of 1901 he was elected Perpetual Honorary President, and tlje event was signalised by an outimrst of applause which it seemed would never cease. Previously in England he had started the Physiological Society for the purpose of bringing together all English physiologists, and in both cases he insisted from the outset that the communications submitted should consist of the demonstration of new facts rather than of the reading of papers. The same spirit was shown in starting the Journal of Physiology, on the title page of which appeared as his coadjutors the names of American as well as of English physiologists. The Journal was run on dignified Hues. Paper, typography and figures were so good as constantly to excite admiration abroad, although this policy involved considerable financial loss to the editor. In the course of a visit to America I was much impressed by the r-spect and reverence shown for Poster. There he is regarded as the founder of modern physiology. The late New,ill Marlin, one of his first pupils,‘was sent by him to the Johns Hopkins University as their first Professor of Physiology, and through his influence Poster’s methods and teaching took root and spread. Even in Germany those methods are coming more and more into vogue. Poster’s greatest contribuli in to physiological literature undoubtedly is his text book, which was published in 1876 and ran through six editions. It was novel, both in style and matter, and was written in an easy and fascinating manner. It was republished in America, and translated into more than one European language, and Foster used to repeat with great glee the remark made to him by a waiter at one of the hotels in Yellowstone Park : ‘ Waal Professor Poster, I'm vurry glad to make your acquaintance. Many and many’s the weary hour I have spent over your book.’ In 1872 he was elected a fellow of the Royal Society, and in 1881 he succeeded Huxley, who became President, as one of its secretaries, lie held this post until 1903.