Samuel Garth
Sir Samuel Garth (circa 1661-1719) was an English physician and poet known for his influential work, "The Dispensary" (1699), which humorously defended the role of the Royal College of Physicians in providing charitable medicines while critiquing apothecaries. Born to a Yorkshire landowner, Garth pursued his education at Peterhouse College, Cambridge, and later studied medicine at Leyden, earning his M.D. in 1691. He became a fellow of the Royal College of Physicians in 1693 and was politically aligned with the Whig party, participating in the Kit-Cat Club alongside notable figures of his time.
Garth's contributions to literature include a preface to a translation of Ovid's "Metamorphoses" and a Latin oration in honor of fellow poet John Dryden. Despite the limited scope of his poetry, his writing garnered attention for its wit and engagement with contemporary issues. Garth's moral character and charitable actions earned him respect, even among the Christian community, despite his freethinking beliefs. He eventually became physician-in-ordinary to King George I and was knighted in 1714. Garth passed away on January 18, 1719, leaving behind a legacy that reflects the intersection of medicine and literature in the early 18th century.
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Samuel Garth
Poet
- Born: c. 1661
- Birthplace: Bolam, Durham, England
- Died: January 18, 1719
Biography
Sir Samuel Garth was born around 1661 in Bolan, Durham, England. A physician by vocation, as a poet he is chiefly remembered as the author of The Dispensary (1699), a burlesque poem defending the practice of the Royal College of Physicians of supplying medicines to outpatient dispensaries, and ridiculing the opposition of apothecaries to this practice. The poem was highly popular, going through ten editions in a little more than forty years.
Garth was the eldest son of a Yorkshire landowner. After attending Ingleton in Yorkshire, he entered Peterhouse College, Cambridge, in 1676, receiving his B.A. in 1679, and M.A. in 1684. He studied medicine at Leyden, returning to Cambridge to receive his M.D. in 1691. Garth was elected a fellow of the Royal College of Physicians, London, on July 26, 1693. He married Martha Beaufoy, who died in 1717; they had one daughter, who survived both of them.
Garth was a Whig politically and a member of the party’s Kit-Cat Club, a group of politicians and writers. Garth loved literature (without being a particularly talented writer) and admired certain poets and essayists regardless of their political sympathies, including the Whigs Joseph Addison and Richard Steele and the poets John Dryden and Alexander Pope, who were members of the rival Tory party. In 1697, the controversy over providing charitable medicines to the poor, and thereby reducing the income of some apothecaries, had reached such a level that Garth produced his famous Harveian Oration, in which he defended the continuance of the charity and attacked the usurpation of medical practice by the unqualified. Two years later, he published the humorous poem The Dispensary in six cantos, in which the chief players in the controversy appeared under disguised names.
At the accession of King George I in 1714, Garth was appointed physician-in-ordinary to the king and physician-general to the army. He was knighted in the same year. Garth’s poetic output was limited. Besides The Dispensary, he wrote a preface to a translation of Ovid’s Metamorphoses (himself translating the fourteenth and part of the fifteenth books), a Latin oration in praise of Dryden (1700), and a few other poems, criticized by Samuel Johnson for their mediocrity. Although a freethinker and not a professing Christian, Garth won the admiration of many Christians for his charitable and moral life. Pope referred to him as “the best good Christian without knowing it” and was convinced that Garth died, having received last rites, in the Roman Catholic communion. Garth died on January 18, 1719. His works were collected by Alexander Chalmers in 1810.