Dr. John Armstrong, littérateur, and associate of Smollett, Thomson, Wilkes, and other celebrities / Lewis M. Knapp.
- Knapp, Lewis M. (Lewis Mansfield)
- Date:
- [1944?]
Licence: In copyright
Credit: Dr. John Armstrong, littérateur, and associate of Smollett, Thomson, Wilkes, and other celebrities / Lewis M. Knapp. Source: Wellcome Collection.
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![In April of 1744 appeared Armstrong’s The Art of Preserving Health™ his one poem which deserved much contemporary fame, and which pre¬ sumably added luster to his medical reputation. The publisher of the successful work was Andrew Millar, with whom Armstrong was intimate for many years. In October, 1744, Millar wrote to John Forbes the young¬ er, of Culloden, then in Flanders, a letter containing the following: “Our friend Peter [Rev. Patrick Murdoch]25 is well in Suffolk, Mr Mitchell,26 Thomson and Armstrong are all in good health and frequently join wt [sic] me in remembeering [sic] you.”27 Such was the congenial group of gifted Scotsmen with whom Armstrong appears to have been increasingly associated in 1744, when Smollett began to practice medicine in London. Next year came the Forty-Five, and in April, 1746, Culloden, concern¬ ing which Armstrong, as far as I know, never commented in his writings or correspondence. His feelings may only be guessed at from the fact that one of his brothers was opposed to the rebellion.28 Armstrong’s first known medical appointment came in February, 1746, according to John Nichols’ note: “In Feb. 1746 Dr. Pringle, Dr. Armstrong and Dr. Baker were nominated physicians to the Hospital for lame, maimed, and sick soldiers, behind Buckingham-house.”29 The Dr. Pringle mentioned above was presumably the brilliant Sir John Pringle, born in Roxburghshire in 1707, and hence about two years older than the poet. In 1730 Pringle received his M.D. from Leyden; he then became a physician in Edinburgh and from 1734 to 1742 taught pneumatics and moral philosophy at the University of Edinburgh, where Armstrong had received his M.D. in 1732. It is possible that Armstrong while an ad- 24 This poem in quarto appeared about April 12, 1744, according to the Daily Advertiser for that date. The printer was William Strahan, and thanks to Messrs. Spottiswoode, Ballantyne & Co., Ltd., London, I am able to furnish the following entry from Strahan’s ledger (fol. 39a): Andrew Millar Dr. April 1744 Armstrong’s Art of Preserving Health 17 Sheets Double Pica 4t0 No. 1250 Coarse and 50 Fine @ 21s p Sheet..17/17/0 25 Murdoch was the biographer of the poet Thomson. 26 Mr. Mitchell was Sir Andrew Mitchell, F.R.S. in 1735, close friend of Thomson, and related to Smollett. He was later envoy to Berlin. 27 Quoted from the complete letter in More Culloden Papers ed. Duncan Warrand (Inverness, 1927), m, 233 ff. 28 In The Poetical Works of Armstrong, Dyer, and Green (Edinburgh, 1858), xxnn, the editor, the Rev. George Gilfillan, printed a note on one of the poet’s brothers who succeeded his father as parish clergyman and who according to local tradition was a “flaming Anti- Jacobite.” This brother, William Armstrong, was minister of Castleton from 1733 to 1751. See A. W. Somerville “Dr. John Armstrong, Poet and Physician,” Border Magazine (London, 1926), xxxi, [49]—51. 29 John Nichols’ Literary Anecdotes (London, 1812-15), in, 144.](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b30632018_0006.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
