Volume 3 > Half-Volume 5

248
his latter years he resided in Paris, where he died,
in indigent circumstances, on the 10th March, 1825,
at the age of sixty-seven. He is described to have
been "a very little and very thin old man, with a
very small, sharp, yellow face, thickly pitted by the
small-pox, and decked with a pair of green spec-
tacles."1
PITCAIRNE, DR. ARCHIBALD, an eminent phy-
sician of the seventeenth century, was born at Edin-
burgh on the 25th December, 1652. His father, who
was descended of an ancient family in Fife, was an
eminent merchant, and one of the magistrates of the
city. His mother, whose name was Sydserf, was a
member of a highly respectable family in East Lo-
thian. Dr. Pitcairne received the earlier part of his
education at Dalkeith. He was afterwards removed
to the university of Edinburgh, where he made great
progress in classical learning, and completed a regular
course of philosophy. His subsequent education
ranged over the extensive field of the three profes-
sions pre-eminently styled learned. At the request
of his friends, who were desirous that he should de-
vote himself to the church, he first entered on the
study of theology, but finding neither this study nor
the profession to which it led at all suitable to his
temper, disposition, or habits, he abandoned it, and
turned his attention to law.
To this pursuit, which he found more congenial than
the other, and in which he became fired with an
ambition to excel, he devoted himself with an ardour
and intensity of application that induced symptoms of
approaching consumption. To arrest the progress
of this malady, he was advised by his physicians to
repair to the south of France for the benefit of the
milder climate of that country. By the time, how-
ever, that Mr. Pitcairne reached Paris he found him-
self so much better, that he determined on remain-
ing in that city, and resuming his legal studies there;
but having formed an acquaintance, while in the
French capital, with some agreeable young men
from Scotland, who were engaged in the study of
medicine, he was prevailed upon by them to abandon
the law and to join in their pursuits. To these he
applied accordingly for several months, when he was
recalled to Edinburgh by his father. This was now
the third profession which he had begun, and the
indecision of his conduct with regard to a permanent
choice naturally gave much uneasiness to his friends;
but this was allayed by his finally declaring for
physic, and applying himself with extraordinary
diligence to the study of botany, pharmacy, and ma-
teria medica. He afterwards went a second time to
Paris to complete his studies, and on that occasion
acquired an entire and profound knowledge of medi-
cine. Thus prepared, he returned to his native
city, where he practised with singular success till
the year 1692, when his great reputation, which was
now diffused throughout Europe, and which had
been not a little increased by his able treatise re-
garding Hervey's discovery of the circulation of the
blood, entitled Solutio Problemati de Inventoribus,
procured him an invitation from Leyden to the pro-
fessorship of physic in the celebrated university of
that city; and so sensible were the patrons of the
merits of Dr. Pitcairne, and the value of his services,
that the invitation was accompanied by the offer of a
much larger salary than had been usually attached
to the office. Dr. Pitcairne accepted the invitation,
but remained in Leyden only twelve months. At the
end of that period he came over to Edinburgh to
marry a daughter of Sir Archibald Stevenson, an
1 Nichol's Illustrations, v. 671.
eminent physician in the latter city, to whom he had
been betrothed before leaving Scotland, and whom
it was his intention to carry along with him to Ley-
den; but the lady's friends objected to her going
abroad, and Dr. Pitcairne so far yielded to these ob-
jections as to resign his professorship, and reconcile
himself to the resumption of his practice as a physi-
cian in his native city. Nor had he any reason to
regret the change thus in a manner forced upon him,
for he soon found himself in possession of a most
extensive and lucrative business. During the short
time he was at Leyden Dr. Pitcairne chose the texts
of his medical lectures from the writings of Bellini,
who, in return for this flattering compliment, dedi-
cated to the doctor his Opuscula.
Dr. Pitcairne's reputation for skill in his profes-
sion now daily increased. He was consulted by pa-
tients in distant parts of Scotland, and frequently
from England and Wales, and was altogether looked
upon as the most eminent physician of his time.
Nor was his fame as a scholar behind that which he
enjoyed as a medical practitioner. His Solutio Pro-
blemati, &c., published soon after he had first com-
menced business in Edinburgh, had gained him much
reputation as a learned man as well as a skilful physi-
cian, and he still more strongly established his claims
to the former character by a quarto work, entitled
Archibalds  Pitcarnii  Dissertationes Medicce, which
was published at Rotterdam in 1701, and dedicated
to his friend Bellini. Dr. Pitcairne also wrote Latin
poetry with very considerable elegance and taste,
although Wodrow, in his Analecta, speaks of him in
this capacity as only "a sort of a poet." But he
was something more than this, and had not the sub-
jects of his muse unfortunately been all of but tran-
sitory interest, and therefore now nearly wholly un-
intelligible, his fame as a Latin poet would have
been very far from contemptible. Some of these
poems were published in 1727 by Ruddiman, in
order to meet a charge which had been made upon
Scotland that it was deficient in this department of
literature.
Dr. Pitcairne's chief work was published in 1718,
under the title of Elementa Medicines Physico-Mathe-
matica, consisting of his lectures at Leyden. He
was considered to be the first physician of his time.
His library is said to have been one of the best pri-
vate collections of that period; and it was purchased,
after his death, by the Czar of Russia. In addition
to his Latin verses, he was the author of a comedy
called The Assembly, which is a sarcastic and pro-
fane production: also Babell; or the Assembly, a
Poem, 1692, both being intended to turn the proceed-
ings of the General Assembly into ridicule. Dr.
Pitcairne was a Jacobite and an Episcopalian; and
his talent for satire was often directed against the
Presbyterians, who accused him of being an atheist
and a scoffer and reviler of religion. Wodrow even
goes the length of retaliating upon him by a serious
charge as to his temperance. An atheistical pamphlet
published in 1688, entitled Epistola Archimedis ad
Regem Gelonem Alba Gracce reperta anno �r� Chris-
tiana, was ascribed to Pitcairne; and when the Rev.
Thomas Halyburton entered upon the office of pro-
fessor of divinity in the university of St. Andrews in
1710, his inaugural discourse was a refutation of the
arguments of this performance, and was published
in 1714 under the title of Natural Religion insufficient,
and Revealed necessary to  Man's Happiness. His
verses written on Christmas-day have been referred
to as a proof of Dr. Pitcairne's orthodoxy, on which
he had himself thrown a doubt by his profane jest-
ing and his habitual scoffing at religious men; and it
is added, on the authority of Dr. Drummond, that,