Mark Akenside

Mark Akenside ( born November 9, 1721 Newcastle upon Tyne; † June 23, 1770 in London ) was an English physician, poet and author of a number of medical works.

Life and work

He was born in Newcastle -upon- Tyne, the second son of a butcher. His father Mark Akenside sen. was a member of a Presbyterian church, and his mother was Mary Lumsden. The couple was married on 10 August 1710. He received his first education at the Royal Free Grammar School of Newcastle. The young Mark Akenside was injured at the age of seven years while playing in his father's butcher shop down by a falling cleaver on foot. An injury that drew him to live long.

First, from 1738 he studied theology in Edinburgh. The study was made ​​possible by Akenside a fund to support young men with scanty financial background to allow him the training to a Presbyterian priest. The following winter of the year 1739 Akenside changed but in the medicine. 1741, he went to Leyden ( Republic of the Seven United Provinces ), to expand its medical knowledge to three years later, on 16 May 1744 to be promoted with the topic Dissertatio de ortu et incremento fetus humani. A topic that dealt with the growth of the human fetus. With the end of his medical studies in 1744, he left Leyden. Thereafter, he practiced first in Northampton, Hampstead, and finally in London. His M.D. was awarded by the University of Cambridge in 1753, as a member of the Royal College of Physicians he was taken on in 1754 him.

One of the most remarkable poems of his time was The Pleasures of the Imagination (1744). Akenside wrote it as twenty-three, after a stay in 1738 in Morpeth where he the idea of ​​a didactic poem, didactic poem. The subsequent translation into French Henri Thiry d' Holbach got Paul, a friend of Leiden times in 1759. Akenside As his poem for the first time the publisher Robert Dodsley ( 1704-1764 ) submitted, consulted his friend, the poet and translator of this Alexander Pope to judge the literary value of the work. He should have said, Akenside was not a common Schreiber ( no everyday writer).

Akenside died at his home in Burlington Street in London, where he lived the last ten years.

Works (selection)

Medicine

  • Diss de dysenteria. London, 1764

Poetry

  • A British Philippic. 1738
  • An Epistle to Curio. 1744
  • The Pleasures of Imagination. 1744
  • Friendship and Love. A Dialogue. 1745
  • An Ode to the Right Honourable the Earl of Huntingdon. 1748
  • An Ode to the Country Gentlemen of England. 1758
  • An Ode to the Late Thomas Edwards. 1766
Doctor of Medicine Morpeth (Northumberland) Encyclopædia Britannica Integrated Authority File
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