Samuel Garth

Sir Samuel Garth (1661 - 1719) was an English physician and poet.

Garth was born in Bolam in County Durham and educated at the University of Cambridge in 1676, graduating B.A. in 1679 andM.A. in 1684. He took his M.D. and became a member of the College of Physicians in 1691. He settled as a physician in London and soon acquired a large practice. He was a zealous Whig, the friend of Addison and, though of different political views, of Pope. He ended his career as physician to George I, who knighted home in 1714.

In 1697 he delivered the Harveian oration, in which he advocated a scheme dating from some ten years back for providing dispensaries for the relief of the sick poor, as a protection against the greed of the apothecaries. In 1699 he published a mock-heroic poem, "The Dispensary", in six cantos, which had an instant success, passing through three editions within a year. In this he ridiculed the apothecaries and their allies among the physicians. He is also remembered as the author of "Claremont", a descriptive poem. He translated the "Life of Otho" in the fifth volume of Dryden's Plutarch, and also edited a translation of Ovid's "Metamorphoses", to which Addison, Pope, and others contributed. His intervention ensured an honourable burial for John Dryden and he pronounced a eulogy at the funeral in Westminster Abbey.

For a while, he owned the manor of Edgcott in Buckinghamshire. He died on the 18th of January 1719.

Notes

*A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature
*1911

External links

* [http://books.google.com/books?id=gO00AAAAMAAJ The Dispensary] from Google Book Search
* [http://books.google.com/books?id=0KQDAAAAQAAJ The works of Sir Samuel Garth] from Google Book Search