Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 01.djvu/53

Abercromby Lord Abercromby's known contributions to literature consist of ten papers in the ‘Mirror’ and nine in the ‘Lounger.’

[Notice of Lord Abercromby by Henry Mackenzie in the Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, vol. iv. part 1, app. I.]  ABERCROMBY, ALEXANDER (1784–1853), colonel, was youngest son of Sir Ralph Abercromby, and was born in 1784. He entered the army at an early age, and served as a volunteer with the 92nd regiment in the expedition to the Helder in 1799. He soon obtained his commission, and saw service with his regiment in Egypt. He was appointed aide-de-camp to his father's old lieutenant and friend, Sir John Moore, during his command in Sicily in 1806, but was not with him in Spain. Like his brother, Sir John, he was rapidly promoted, and in 1808, when only twenty-four, became lieutenant-colonel of the 28th regiment. He accompanied his regiment when it was sent to Portugal to reinforce Lord Wellington after the battle of Talavera. He commanded it at the battle of Busaco, and in the lines of Torres Vedras, and as senior colonel had the good fortune to command his brigade at the battle of Albuera. His services there were very conspicuous, and his brigade has been immortalised by Napier. He was soon superseded, but commanded his regiment at the surprise of Arroyo de Molinos and the storming of the forts at Almaraz. In 1812 he was removed to the staff of the army, and was present as assistant-quartermaster-general at the battles of Vittoria, the Pyrenees, and Orthes. He served in the same capacity in 1815, and was present at Quatre-Bras, Waterloo, and the storming of Peronne. For his active services he was promoted to a colonelcy in the 2nd or Coldstream guards, and made a companion of the Bath, a knight of the order of Maria Theresa of Austria, of the Tower and Sword of Portugal, and of St. George of Russia. He was returned to parliament in 1817 for the county of Clackmannan in the place of his brother Sir John, but retired in the following year. He was for some time in command of the 2nd guards, but retired on half-pay when there seemed to be no chance of another war, and died at his country seat in Scotland in 1853. He had no small share of the military ability of his family, and was an admirable regimental and staff officer; but the long peace which followed the battle of Waterloo gave him no opportunity to show whether he had his father's ability to command an army.

[For his services see the Royal Military Calendar, vol. iv., and occasional allusions in the Wellington Despatches; for the battle of Albuera see Napier's Peninsular War, book xii. chaps. 6 and 7, and the discussion which arose on these chapters in the United Service Magazine and published pamphlets.]  ABERCROMBY, DAVID (d. 1701–2?), was a Scottish physician of the seventeenth century. Half a century after his death, his ‘Nova Medicinæ Praxis’ (1685) was reprinted at Paris (1740); and during his lifetime his ‘Tuta ac efficax Luis Venereæ, sæpe absque Mercurio ac semper absque Salivatione mercuriali, curandæ Methodus’ (1684, 8vo), was translated into French (Paris, 1690), as by ‘celebre médicin d'Angleterre;’ and into Dutch (Amsterdam, 1691) by no less than J. B. Lusart. It was also translated into German (Dresden, 1702, 8vo). His books also gave him a place of honour in Haller's ‘Bibliotheca Medicinæ Pract.’ (4 vols. 4to, iii. 619, 1779). His other professional works are: ‘De Variatione et Varietate Pulsus Observationes’ (London and Paris, 1685); and ‘Ars explorandi Medicas Facultates Plantarum ex solo Sapore’ (London, 1685–8, 12mo). His ‘Opuscula’ were collected in 1687.

But it is as a metaphysician rather than as a physician that he lives, and ought to live. His ‘Discourse of Wit’ (1686)—wrongly assigned by some writers to Patrick Abercromby—has somehow fallen out of sight, but none the less is it a more than ordinarily noticeable book. It antedates the (so-called) ‘Scottish School of Philosophy’ a century nearly; for in it Dr. Thomas Reid's philosophy of common sense—since glorified by Sir William Hamilton—is distinctly taught. Of kin with it is the following: ‘Academia Scientiarum, or the Academy of Sciences; being a Short and Easie Introduction to the Knowledge of the Liberal Arts and Sciences, with the names of those famous authors that have written on any particular Science. In English and Latine’ (1687, 12mo). This is arranged alphabetically from Algebra to Rectiline Trigonometry, and is far ahead of its age. Equally weighty and characteristic is another treatise, ‘A Moral Discourse of the Power of Interest; by David Abercromby, M.D. and Fellow of the Colledge of Physicians in Amsterdam’ (London, 1690, 12mo). This is dedicated worthily to Boyle. ‘Almighty interest’—perhaps the prototype of the American ‘almighty dollar’—is here asserted to be ‘the undoubted cause of all the Transactions of the Politick World.’ The ‘Discourse’ is packed with capital stories and racy and sometimes severely sarcastic sayings.

Biographically, a little book of his, hitherto 