43 Facts About John Arbuthnot

John Arbuthnot FRS, often known simply as Dr Arbuthnot, was a Scottish physician, satirist and polymath in London.

John Arbuthnot is best remembered for his contributions to mathematics, his membership in the Scriblerus Club, and for inventing the figure of John Bull.

Alexander Pope noted to Joseph Spence that John Arbuthnot allowed his infant children to play with, and even burn, his writings.

Where John Arbuthnot's brothers took part in Jacobite causes in 1689, he remained with his father.

However, when William and Mary came to the throne and the Scottish and English parliaments required all ministers to swear allegiance to them as king and queen, John Arbuthnot's father did not comply.

John Arbuthnot went to London in 1691, where he is supposed to have supported himself by teaching mathematics.

John Arbuthnot lodged with William Pate, whom Swift knew and called a "bel esprit".

John Arbuthnot published Of the Laws of Chance in 1692, translated from Christiaan Huygens's De ratiociniis in ludo aleae.

The work, which applied the field of probability to common games, was a success, and John Arbuthnot became the private tutor of one Edward Jeffreys, son of Jeffrey Jeffreys, an MP.

John Arbuthnot remained Jeffreys's tutor when the latter attended University College, Oxford in 1694, and he there met the variety of scholars then teaching mathematics and medicine, including Dr John Radcliffe, Isaac Newton, and Samuel Pepys.

However, John Arbuthnot lacked the money to be a full-time student and was already well educated, although informally.

John Arbuthnot first wrote satire in 1697, when he answered Dr John Woodward's An essay towards a natural history of the earth and terrestrial bodies, especially minerals.

John Arbuthnot poked fun at the arrogance of the work and Woodward's misguided, Aristotelian insistence that what is theoretically attractive must be actually true.

In 1701, John Arbuthnot wrote another mathematical work, An essay on the usefulness of mathematical learning, in a letter from a gentleman in the city to his friend in Oxford.

The work was moderately successful, and John Arbuthnot praises mathematics as a method of freeing the mind from superstition.

John Arbuthnot was elected to be a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1704.

John Arbuthnot was an amiable individual, and Swift said that the only fault an enemy could lay upon him was a slight waddle in his walk.

In 1705, John Arbuthnot became physician extraordinary to Queen Anne, and at the same time was put on the board trying to publish the Historia coelestius.

Newton and Edmund Halley wanted it published immediately, to support their work on orbits, while John Arbuthnot Flamsteed, the Royal Astronomer whose observations they were, wanted to keep the data secret until he had perfected it.

The result was that John Arbuthnot used his leverage as friend and physician to Prince George, whose money was paying for the publication, to force Flamsteed to allow it out, albeit with serious errors, in 1712.

Also as a scholar, John Arbuthnot took up an interest in antiquities and published Tables of Grecian, Roman, and Jewish measures, weights and coins; reduced to the English standard in 1705,1707,1709, and, expanded with a preface, in 1727 and 1747.

John Arbuthnot was made a physician in ordinary to the Queen, which made him part of the royal household.

In 1713, John Arbuthnot continued his political satire with Proposals for printing a very curious discourse.

Also in 1713, John Arbuthnot was made a physician of Chelsea Hospital, which provided him with a house.

When George I came to the throne, John Arbuthnot lost all of his royal appointments and houses, but he still had a vigorous medical practice.

John Arbuthnot lived at "the second door from the left in Dover Street" in Piccadilly.

In 1717, John Arbuthnot contributed somewhat to Pope and Gay's play, Three Hours after Marriage, which ran for seven nights.

John Arbuthnot was a friend to George Frederic Handel and appointed director to the Royal Academy of Music from the start in 1719 till 1729.

In particular, he attacked Dr Woodward, who had again presented a dogmatic and, John Arbuthnot thought, irrational opinion.

In 1723, John Arbuthnot was made one of the censors of the Royal College of Physicians, and as such he was one of the campaigners to inspect and improve the drugs sold by apothecaries in London.

In 1723, the apothecaries sued the RCP, and John Arbuthnot wrote Reasons humbly offered by the.

The visit bore fruit in Pope's The Dunciad of 1729, where John Arbuthnot probably wrote the "Virgilius restauratus" satirizing Richard Bentley.

John Arbuthnot was guardian to Peter the Wild Boy on his first arrival in London.

John Arbuthnot argued that the air itself had to have enormous effects on the personality and persons of humanity, and he believed that the air of locations resulted in the characteristics of the people, as well as particular maladies.

John Arbuthnot advised his readers to ventilate sickrooms and to seek fresh air in cities.

John Arbuthnot contributed "An Essay of the Learned Martinus Scriblerus Concerning the Origine of the Sciences" to the volume.

John Arbuthnot had kidney stones and asthma, and he was overweight.

John Arbuthnot was one of the founding members of the Scriblerus Club, and was regarded by the other wits of the group as the funniest, but he left fewer literary remains than the other members.

John Arbuthnot's satires are written with an ease, a humanity, and an apparent sympathy.

Swift and John Arbuthnot had similar styles in language with a feigned frenzy of lists and taxonomies, and sometimes their works are attributed to each other.

Generally, John Arbuthnot's writings are not as vicious or nihilistic as Swift's, but they attack the same targets and both refuse to hold up a set of positive norms for their readers.

John Arbuthnot was the most universal genius, being an excellent physician, a man of deep learning, and a man of much humour.

John Arbuthnot was a conduit and source for a great many of the finest literary accomplishments for over half a century of writing, but Arbuthnot was zealous that he not receive credit.