Forster, Richard (DNB00)
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FORSTER, RICHARD, M.D. (1546?-1616), physician, son of Laurence Forster, was born at Coventry about 1546, and was educated at All Souls' College, Oxford. He graduated at Oxford, M.B. and M.D., both in 1573. He became a fellow of the College of Physicians of London about 1575, but his admission is not mentioned in the 'Annals.' In 1583 he was elected one of the censors, in 1600 treasurer, and Lumleian lecturer in 1602. He was president of the college from 1601 to 1604, and was again elected in 1615 and held office till his death on 27 March 1616. He had considerable medical practice, and was also esteemed as a mathematician. Camden, when recording his death, describes him as 'Medicinae doctor et nobilis Mathematicus.' Clowes, the surgeon, praises him, and in 1591 (Prooved Practice, p. 46) speaks of him as 'a worthie reader of the surgerie lector in the Phisition's college,' showing that he gave lectures before the Lumleian lectures were formally instituted in 1602. Forster had been introduced to Robert, earl of Leicester, by Sir Henry Sidney, and dedicated to the earl in 1575 his only published work, a thin oblong quarto, entitled 'Ephemerides Meteorologicae Richardi Fosteri artium ac medicinae doctoris ad annum 1575 et positum finitoris Londini emporii totius Angliae nobilissimi diligenter examinatae.' Besides the prose dedication, in which astronomy is said to be the handmaid of medicine, twenty lines of Latin verse on Leicester's cognisance, the bear, precede the tables of which the book is made up.
[Munk's Coll. of Phys. i. 74; Wood's Fasti Oxon. vol. i.; Preface to Forster's Ephemerides; Clowes's Surgical Works.]
