ARMSTRONG, John, a physician, litterateur, and poet, the friend of Thomson, Mallet, and Wilkes, was born about 1709 at Castletown, Roxburghshire, where his father was parish minister. He graduated M.D. at Edinburgh university, and soon afterwards settled in London, where, however, his professional success was small. In all probability he paid more attention to literature than to medicine. He was, in 1746, appointed one of the physicians to the military hospital behind Buckingham House; and, in 1760, physician to the army in Germany, an appointment which he held till the peace of 1763. His latter years seem to have been embittered by disappointments, as is evinced by the tone of his writings, in which he particularly directs his sarcasms against his medical brethren and the reviewers. He died in 17 7 9. Armstrong’s first publication, an anonymous one, entitled An Essay for Abridging the Study of Physic (1735), was a satire on the ignorance of the apothecaries and medical men of his day. This was followed two years after by the Economy of Love, a poem the indecency of which damaged his professional practice. In 1744 appeared his Art of Preserving Health, a very successful didactic poem, and the one production on which his literary reputation rests. Along with this poem were published, in 1770, a number of shorter poetical pieces, under the title of Miscellanies, in which he displays considerable humour and powers of observation.