Born on April 22nd, 1810, at Holywell, a small Bedfordshire village near Hitchin. His father was a yeoman farmer sprung from long generations of Hertfordshire and Bedfordshire farmers, some of whom had been close personal friends of John Bunyan, the earlier generations being Puritans, the later Unitarians. John Foster, father of Michael, had antiquarian tastes and left to the British Museum a collection of coins found in his neighbourhood. Michael Foster was apprenticed in 1826 to Mr Peck, surgeon, of Kimbolton, and entered University College, London, in 1831, where he won many medals; he afterwards received his medical education at the North London Hospital. He then went to Huntingdon, first as assistant and afterwards in partnership with Jonah Wilson. He became Medical Officer to the Huntingdon County Hospital and Surgeon to the County Gaol, practising in partnership with Morriston Davis and Herbert Lucas. He married Mercy Cooper, and had a family of three sons and seven daughters : the eldest son and the only one that survived his father was Michael Foster (1836-1907), the physiologist. Publications:- "Trifolium in Foeno (the Common Clover Hay) in Pertussis." - *Med. Times and Gaz.*, 1861, I, 561. "Nitrite of Amyl in Tetanus." - *Lancet*, 1870, I, 533.