JOHN, a distinguished English physician, was born in 1675 at Croton in Northamptonshire. He made great progress in classical knowledge under Dr Busby at Westminster, and at Christ Church, Oxford, under Dr Aldrich; and while still very young, produced, along with Foulkes, an excellent edition of the speeches of Eschines and Demosthenes on the affair of Ctesiphon. After this he began the study of medicine, and having proved his scientific attainments by various treatises, was appointed professor of chemistry at Oxford in 1704. In the following year he accompanied the English army, under the Earl of Peterborough, into Spain; and on returning home in 1707, wrote an account of the expedition, which attained extraordinary popularity. Two years later he published his Prelectiones Chimicae, which he dedicated to Sir Isaac Newton. In 1722 he entered parliament as member for Launceston in Cornwall, but being suspected of favouring the cause of the exiled Stuarts, he spent half of that year in the Tower. During his imprisonment he conceived the plan of his most important and valuable work, The History of Physic, of which the first part appeared in 1725, and the second in the following year. In this latter year he was appointed physician to Queen Caroline, an office which he held till his death in 1728. A complete edition of his Latin works, with a Latin translation of the History of Physic, was published in London a few years after his death.