Page:American Medical Biographies - Kelly, Burrage.djvu/425

NAME FOSTER 403 FOSTER course at Harvard, graduating in 1885, and spent eighteen months as interne in the Massa- chusetts General Hospital, after which he went to Europe, where he studied in Dublin and Vienna. He began active practice in 1888 in Minneapolis, at which time he was assistant to the professor of anatomy in the University of Minnesota. He remained a member of the medical faculty of that institution until his death. In 1891 he established himself in St. Paul and from that time limited his prac- tice to his specialty. On New Year's Day, 1894, he married So- phia Vernon Hammond, daughter of General John H. Hammond, who served his country during the Civil War. Their three children and his widow survived him. When the Ramsey County Medical Society established the St. Pan! Medical Journal in 1898, Foster was appointed editor, a position he held until January 1, 1916. At that time the Editing and Publishing Committee made a statement from which the following is an abstract : "Dr. Burnside Foster has laid down the editorial burden he has carried for seventeen years with such distinguished success. His scholarly editorials, written in his finished style and faultless English, will undoubtedly be missed. The editorial pages of the Journal have repeatedly exerted the most widespread influence." Dr. Foster was the first to urge the fre- quent examination of people in apparently good health that they might thus be guided by their physicians in the preservation of their most valuable asset. In recognition of his services in this work he was made a member of the board of trustees of the Life Exten- sion Institute, New York. As the result of an attack made by him in the editorial columns of the Journal, upon immoral medical advertisements in the daily papers, the Postmaster General of the United States issued an order excluding papers carrying these advertisements from the United States mails. This has purged the announce- ments of abortionists et id omne genus from the reading matter daily offered to the families of the entire country. At a very early date he waged war on the practice of splitting fees. On the question of euthanasia he always upheld the right of the individual to live his life. The St. Paul Medi- cat jouiual under his leadership has the unique distinction of being the only organ of a county medical society that has survived the diseases of infancy. In 1909 Dr. Foster was invited to address the Association of Life Insurance Presidents, New York City, on methods of increasing the longevity of their policyholders. Burnside Foster excelled in all the social virtues. His home and his family were his most highly prized possessions and there it was that he was seen at his best. As a host he was perfect, and no one privileged to enjoy the hospitality of the home presided over by the genial physician and his charming wife could ever forget such a rare experience. In the midst of his numerous activities at the early age of fifty-six after a short ill- ness he breathed his last at his home in the early summer of 1917. H. LONGSTREET TaYLOR. Foster, Frank Pierce (1841-1911). Frank Pierce Foster, one of the most scholarly of American medical editors and a gynecologist of no mean repute, was born in Concord, New Hampshire, November 26, 1841. He was descended from a long line of New England ancestors, his mother being a niece of Daniel Webster. His early education was obtained in the schools of his native town and he was thoroughly grounded in Latin and Greek, as well as English, in the Concord High School, where, as in similar schools in other New England towns of that day, much more attention was paid to the humanities than is done in most of the colleges at the present time. In his boyhood he chose medi- cine as a career and at the age of fifteen entered the office of a local physician, Dr. Lyman Gage, where he acquired a practi- cal knowledge of medical botany and was trained in anatomy and chemistry. He en- tered the Harvard Medical School in 1859, but the following year went to New York and completed his medical course at the Col- lege of Physicians and Surgeons, receiving his degree from that institution in 1862. Af- ter graduation he served for two years in the New York Hospital and then took a trip as ship's surgeon around the Horn to San Francisco, returning to the East by way of the Isthmus. Upon his return he entered the army as acting assistant surgeon and at the close of the war in 1865 began practice in New York City. Early in his medical life Dr. Foster became interested in dermatology. While studying that specialty he had occasion to observe the inconvenience and the evils of arm-to-arm and scab vaccination and was thereby to urge the practice of bovine vaccination which he in-