"'The chearful haunts': John Armstrong (1709-1779), physician, poet, satirist and leveller of medical knowledge"
Document Type
Article
Abstract
The Scottish physician-poet John Armstrong, the first honours graduate of the University of Edinburgh School of Medicine, best remembered for The Art of Preserving Health (1744), is often dismissed as a failed physician and mediocre poet. Adam Budd's new edition exhumes Armstrong as an original voice who offered timely reassurance 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 leveler 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.
Publication Info
1 Journal of Medical Biography, Volume 23, Issue 4, 2015. Bryan, Charles S. and Scott, Patrick G. "'The chearful haunts': John Armstrong (1709-1779), physician, poet, satirist and leveller of medical knowledge." Journal of Medical Biography, 23: 4 (November 2015): 196-204. [Previously accessible in Journal of Medical Biography Online First, January 27 2014, 1 PMID: 24585614]. (c) Sage Publications, 2014.