John Arbuthnot, often known simply as Dr. Arbuthnot,, was a physician, satirist and polymath in London. He is best remembered for his contributions to mathematics, his membership in the Scriblerus Club, and for inventing the figure of John Bull. In his mid-life, Arbuthnot, complaining of the work of Edmund Curll, among others, who would commission and invent a biography as soon as an author died, said, "Biography is one of the new terrors of death," and so a biography of Arbuthnot is made difficult by his own reluctance to leave records. Alexander Pope noted to Joseph Spence that Arbuthnot allowed his infant children to play with, and even...more »