I find four physicians by the name of Abercromby, who were excellent physicians, and authors of no little note. One, Patrick, a Scotchman, and physician to James II., had a library second to few physicians of his day. Lancisi, an Italian physician who lived at the same time, possessed a splendid library consisting of thirty thousand volumes. He discovered a set of lost plates of Eustachius, from which he published tables. Lancisi was physician to several popes, and was a master of polite literature, and an author of great distinction.
More Schoolmasters and Tailors.
Dr. Richard Blackmore (Sir)—our “schoolmaster turned doctor”—was an author of no small note. “A poet of the time of Dryden in better repute as an honest man and a physician,” says a biographer.
He should have been a man of importance, since Swift was pitted against him in “brutal verse.” Steele and Pope scribbled about the pedagogue Blackmore. Dryden, who was unable to answer him, called him “a pedant, an ass, a quack, and a cant preacher,” and he was ridiculed by the whole set of “petty scribblers, professional libellers, coffee-house rakes, and literary amateurs of the Temple who formed the rabble of the vast army against which the doctor had pitted himself in defence of public decency and domestic morality.” We have already referred to the “forty sets of ribald verses taunting him of his early poverty, which caused him to become a schoolmaster.”
Amongst his works were “Alfred,” a poem of twenty books; another of twelve books; “Hymn to Light,” “Satire against Wit,” “The Nature of Man;” “Creation,” in seven books; “Redemption,” in six books, etc.
Dr. Johnson says of Dr. Blackmore, “And let it be remembered for his honor that to have been a schoolmaster is the only reproach which all the perspicacity of malice animated by wit has ever fixed upon his private life.”
Heinrich Stilling, “a pseudonyme adopted by Heinrich Jung, in one of the most remarkable autobiographies ever written,” was born about the year 1740, in Nassau. He was bred a tailor, and with his father followed his occupation until the son, by his own efforts and by the aid of his remarkable natural abilities, raised him to a more exalted position. By great efforts and diligent study he acquired a knowledge of Latin and Greek, and something of medicine, when he proceeded to the University of Strasburg. Here he remained prosecuting his studies with much diligence and zeal until he obtained not only his degree, but succeeded to the appointment of a professorship, and raised himself to eminence both by his ability as a lecturer and as an operator.
He was also an author of considerable renown, not only on medical subjects, but as a miscellaneous writer. His novel named “Theobold” is still read. He wrote a treatise on minerals.
His most remarkable production, however, was his autobiography entitled “Jugend, Junglingjahre, Wanderschaft und Alter Von Heinrich Stilling.”
Cabanis, physician to Napoleon I., was a writer of note, particularly on physiology and philosophy. His complete works were recently published in Paris, and a portion of them have been translated into English.