GARTH, SIR SAMUEL (1661-1 719), English physician and poet, entered Peterhouse, Cambridge, in 1676, graduating B.A. in 1679, and M.A. in 1684. He took his M.D. and became a member of the College of Physicians in 1691. In 1697 he delivered the Harveian oration, in which he advocated a scheme for pro viding dispensaries for the relief of the sick poor as a protection against the greed of the apothecaries. In 1699 he published a mock-heroic poem, The Dispensary, in six cantos, ridiculing the apothecaries and their allies among the physicians.