Author: Pitcairne, Archibald
Biography:
PITCAIRNE, Archibald (1652-1713: ODNB)
A prior author, his previously unpublished Babell was issued by the Maitland Club of Glasgow in 1830. Its editor was George Ritchie Kinloch, a lawyer and antiquary who also edited Ancient Scottish Ballads (1827). Pitcairne was the eldest son of Alexander Pitcairne, a merchant, and his wife Janet Sydserff. He was born in Edinburgh on 25 Dec. 1652 and studied at the Dalkeith School before entering the University of Edinburgh in 1668. He studied first divinity and then law before finally settling on medicine but his interests were wide-ranging; he was a close friend of David Gregory, a mathematician, and worked with him on the method of infinite series. He was a founding member of the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. In about 1680 he married Margaret Hay; their two children died in infancy before Margaret’s death in 1690. Pitcairne served as chair of medicine at the University of Leiden (1691-93) but resigned when he married Elizabeth Stevenson on 8 Aug. 1693; they had four surviving children. Some of Pitcairne’s medical views and publications were controversial and he was ejected from the Edinburgh College of Physicians in 1695; an amnesty was granted in 1703 but Pitcairne had already allied himself with the College of Surgeons. He also stirred up hostility with his pro-Jacobite and anti-Presbyterian views. He died in Edinburgh on 23 Oct. and was buried in Greyfriars churchyard on 26 Oct. 1713. His medical writings, originally published in Latin, were translated into English and published in 1715; his Leiden lectures were issued in 1717. Pitcairne’s estate left extensive debts but his library was sold for £430 to the court of Peter the Great of Russia. (ODNB 25 Oct. 2023)