[1] He was born in Wednesbury, Staffordshire[2][3] but shortly thereafter his father, a successful merchant of ornamental ironwork, moved his family to a house he had built on West Heath Road in Hampstead in north London, which he named St Cuthberts.

[6] Attracted to physiology, he studied under John Burdon Sanderson at Wadham College, Oxford, where he won a first class degree, investigating electrical changes occurring during salivary secretion.

They complemented each other in many ways: for instance, Bayliss dealt with the recording apparatus while Starling worked with the preparation.

He and Starling first studied pressures in the veins and capillaries, but in 1897 they radically changed direction to work on the control of the motility of the gut.

[7] Collaboration became easier when Starling moved to University College London as the Jodrell Chair of Physiology in 1899.

In a flash of inspiration they ground up a sample of intestinal mucosa in sand containing hydrochloric acid; injecting the filtered extract elicited copious pancreatic secretion.

Using cats Bayliss demonstrated that if the salt solution contains five per cent gelatin or gum arabic the rise in blood pressure is sustained and shock is alleviated.

The explanation had been revealed earlier by Starling: molecules too large to escape from the blood plasma while it passes through the capillaries generate the osmotic pressure needed to pull fluid from the extracellular fluid back into the circulation (although Bayliss suggested they might act by increasing blood viscosity).

An obituary noted that "His quiet generosity, his kindliness, his self-effacing modesty and his simple goodness endeared him to all his fellow physiologists"[15] Another pointed out that Bayliss loved to have young physiologists about him and they loved his company because "His knowledge, though exhaustive, was never overbearing, and his genius was never frightening — probably because his mind did not work rapidly.

The Bayliss and Starling Society was founded in 1979 as a forum for scientists with research interests in central and autonomic peptide function.