John Arbuthnot John Arbuthnot John Arbuthnot FRS ("baptised" 29 April 1667 – 27 February 1735), often known simply as Dr Arbuthnot, was a Scottish physician, satirist and polymath in London. He is best remembered for his contributions to mathematics, his membership in the Scriblerus Club (where he inspired both Jonathan Swift's "Gulliver's Travels" book III and Alexander Pope's "Peri Bathous, Or the Art of Sinking in Poetry", "Memoirs of Martin Scriblerus," and possibly "The Dunciad"), and for inventing the figure of John Bull. In his mid-life, Arbuthnot, complaining of the work of Edmund Curll, among others, who commissioned and invented a biography
Epistle to Dr Arbuthnot he had a terminal illness. In a response dated 2 August, Pope indicates that he planned to write more satire, and on 25 August told Arbuthnot that he was going to address one of his epistles to him, later characterizing it as a memorial to their friendship. Arbuthnot died on 27 February 1735, eight weeks after the poem was published. According to Pope the "Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot" was a satire "written piecemeal many years, and which I have now made haste to put together." The poem was completed by 3 September, when Pope wrote to Arbuthnot describing the poem