1752 Dr. John Pr 'ingle , Mark Akenside 43 



men of his time. A Scot by birth, and of good family, he, 

 like so many of his fellow-countrymen, had completed his 

 medical studies at Ley den. He settled first in Edinburgh, 

 where for ten years he was professor of metaphysics and 

 moral philosophy in the University. His known medical 

 attainments led to his being selected in 1742 as physician to 

 the Earl of Stair, commanding the British Army on the 

 Continent, and to his receiving in 1744 the appointment of 

 Physician-General to the army in Flanders. In 1745 he 

 accompanied the Duke of Cumberland into Scotland and 

 was present at the battle of Culloden. In the autumn of 

 1748, on the conclusion of peace, he settled in London, 

 where he soon gained an influential position, not only in 

 the medical profession, but among the scientific circles of 

 the metropolis. A baronetcy was conferred on him in 1766 

 and he became physician to George III. His reputation 

 was high as an authority on military medicine, and his 

 writings on this subject are still held in esteem. He 

 became a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1745 and was 

 President of the Society for six years from 1772 to 1778, 

 during which period he was an active and effective chair- 

 man of the Club. At the time of his election into the Club 

 he was in his forty-fifth year. 



Mark Akenside, besides being a popular poet, was also 

 a trained physician. His " Pleasures of the Imagination " 

 had appeared in January 1744 when he was only three- 

 and- twenty years of age, and made him at once famous. 

 There must have been some marked attraction in his per- 

 sonality, for during three years before his election into the 

 Club he was constantly being invited as a visitor by one 

 member after another. The dinner-register shows that 

 between 2ist April 1751 and the date of his election into 

 the Club, an interval of about sixteen months, he dined with 

 the members no fewer than thirty-three times. He had at 

 first a hard struggle to gain a livelihood as a medical prac- 

 titioner in London, and, as already mentioned, it was mainly 

 through the generous help of a member of the Club, Jeremiah 

 Dyson, that he surmounted his difficulties and secured a 



