'The chearful haunts': John Armstrong (1709–1779), physician, poet, satirist and leveller of medical knowledge. (November 2015)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Bryan, Charles S; Scott, Patrick
• Is Part Of: Journal of medical biography. Volume 23:Number 4(2015:Nov.)
• Page Start: 196
• Page End: 204
• Publication Date: 2015-11
• Subjects: John Armstrong -- Richard Mead -- Alexander Monro -- primus -- William Osler -- Physician-poets -- Scottish -- Hans Sloane; Medicine -- Biography -- Periodicals; Medicine -- History -- Periodicals; 610.92
• DOI: 10.1177/0967772013479273
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0967-7720

Abstract

John Armstrong, the first honours graduate of the University of Edinburgh School of Medicine, was famous in his day for a lengthy didactic poem entitled The Art of Preserving Health (1744). He is now obscure except to scholars specializing in the 18th century and, when discussed at all, often dismissed as a failed physician who wrote mediocre poetry in a quest for money and fame. A new exegesis by Adam Budd exhumes Armstrong as an original voice who offered timely and reassuring advice to Britons as they braced for another epidemic of plague; who depicted illness through the lens of a vulnerable and sympathetic physician, and who was perhaps above all else a leveller of medical knowledge. Elaborating on Budd's thesis, it would seem that Armstrong, a complicated man, has frequently been misread and was in some ways ahead of his time.