ARMSTRONG, JOHN. physician and poet, was b. about 1709 at Castletown, pastoral parish in Roxburghshire, of which his father was minister. He studied medicine at the university of Edinburgh, where he took the degree of M.D., Feb. 4, 1732. Soon after, he commenced practice in London. and became known by the publication of several fugitive pieces and medical essays. In 1737, he published a very objectionable poem, The Economy of Lore, which injured his reputation for a time. His principal work, The Art of Preserving Health, a didactic poem in blank verse, extending through four books, appeared in 1744. In 1746, he was appointed physician to the hospital for sick and lame soldiers. In 1751, he published a volume on Benevolence; in 1753, a poetical epistle on Taste; and in 1758, a volume of prose essays of no great merit. In 1760, be was appointed physician to the forces in Germany. In 1761 appeared from his pen Day, a Poem. On the peace in 1763, he returned to London, and resumed practice.
In 1771, he made a continental tour with Fuseli, the painter, an account of which he published. with the title of A Short Ramble through some Parts of France and Italy, by Lancelot Temple, Esq. His last work was a volume of medical essays. lie contributed to Thomson's Castle of Indolence the four stanzas at the end of the first part, descriptive of the diseases resulting from sloth. D. 7th Sept., 1779. A. was the friend of Thomson, Mallet, Aaron Hill, Dr. Young, Wilkes, and the principal wits and literary men of the period. He seems to have been a reserved, indolent, and splenetic man, " who quite detested talk;" kind-hearted withal, and of frugal habits, having left £3000, saved out of a small and precarious income. His fame rests entirely on The Art of Preserving Health, his other works being now only known by name.