meeting thereof.’ Several others who had adhered to the protest of Pitcairne were also suspended. One object of this procedure was said to have been to influence the election of president for the ensuing year. Dr. Trotter was elected, but Pitcairne and his party withdrew to the house of Sir Alexander Stevenson, and there proceeded to elect Stevenson president. The quarrel led to the publication of a pamphlet entitled ‘Information for Dr. Archibald Pitcairne against the appointed Professor, or a Mathematical Demonstration that Liars should have good Memories, wherein the College of Physicians is vindicated from Calumnies,’ &c., 1696. Ultimately, however, an act of oblivion was passed on 4 June, and confirmed on the 11th and 12th, after which Pitcairne resumed his seat in the college.
On 2 Aug. 1699 Pitcairne received the degree of M.D. from the university of Aberdeen, and on 16 Oct. 1701 he was admitted a fellow of the College of Surgeons, Edinburgh. In 1695 he published at Edinburgh, ‘Dissertatio de Curatione Febrium, quæ per evacuationes instituitur;’ and in 1696, also at Edinburgh, ‘Dissertatio de Legibus Historiæ Naturalis.’ In 1701 his medical dissertations appeared at Rotterdam in one volume, under the title ‘Archibaldi Pitcarnii Scoti Dissertationes Medicæ,’ dedicated to Lorenzo Bellini, professor at Pisa, who had dedicated to him his ‘Opuscula.’ A new and enlarged edition appeared at Edinburgh in 1713, under the title ‘Archibaldi Pitcarnii Scoti Dissertationes Medicæ, quarum multæ nunc primum prodeunt. Subjuncta est Thomæ Boeri, M.D., ad Archibaldum Pitcarnium Epistola, qua respondetur libello Astrucii Franci.’
Chiefly on account of his mockery—often by somewhat indecorous jests—of the puritanical strictness of the presbyterian kirk, Pitcairne became strongly suspected of being at heart an atheist; a suspicion which, if verified, would have entailed on him social ostracism. His religious opinions seem to have differed considerably from those dominant in Scotland at that time; but, although accustomed to ridicule both the calvinism of the kirk and current notions as to the inspiration of scripture, he demurred to be classed as an unbeliever. ‘He was,’ says Wodrow, ‘a professed deist, and by many alleged to be an atheist, though he has frequently professed his belief of a God, and said he could not deny a providence. However, he was a great mocker at religion, and ridiculer of it. He keeped no public society for worship, and on the Sabbath had his set meeting for ridiculing of the scriptures and sermons’ (Analecta, ii. 255). He was the supposed author of an anonymous pamphlet, entitled ‘Epistola Archimedis ad regem Gelonem Albæ Græcæ, reperta anno æræ Christianæ 1688,’ which was made the subject of a lecture by Thomas Halyburton in 1710, published in 1713 at Edinburgh, under the title ‘Natural Religion insufficient and Revealed necessary.’ While at a book-sale, Pitcairne, commenting on the difficulty of obtaining offers for a certain copy of the scriptures, jocularly remarked that it was no wonder it remained on their hands, for ‘verbum Dei manet in æternum.’ On account of the jest he was denounced by a Mr. Webster as an atheist, whereupon he raised an action against his libeller in the court of session, but the matter was finally settled by an arrangement (ib. iii. 307). Pitcairne is the supposed author of ‘The Assembly, or Scotch Reformation: a Comedy as it was acted by the Persons in the Drama, done from the original Transcript written in the year 1692,’ London, 1722; and of ‘Babel, a satirical Poem, written originally in the Irish tongue, and translated into Scotch for the benefite of the Leidges, by A. P., a well-wisher to the Cause,’ 1692. Both are of some historical interest, from their witty, if occasionally ribald, satirical sketches of the leading Scottish divines of the period. His antipathy to the presbyterian ministers is partly to be traced to his strong Jacobite sympathies. In a private letter to a physician in London he made some unguarded remarks in reference to a petition for assembling a parliament, and, the letter having been intercepted, he was on 25 July 1700 brought before the council; but, on acknowledging his fault in writing the letter, which he said he had done in his cups, and without any design of ridiculing the government, he was absolved, after a reprimand from the lord chancellor.
Besides his satirical verses on the kirk, Pitcairne was the author of a considerable number of Latin verses, a selection from which was published by Thomas Ruddiman [q. v.] in a volume entitled ‘Selecta Poemata Archibaldi Pitcarnii et aliorum,’ Edinburgh, 1727. Apart from their intrinsic merit, the poems are of value from their contemporary allusions. Some of these have been explained in Irving's ‘Memoirs of Buchanan’ (App. No. xii), and by Lord Hales in the ‘Edinburgh Magazine and Review’ (i. 255). A collection of jeux d'esprit which Pitcairne occasionally printed for private circulation was made by Archibald Constable the publisher, but the collection cannot now be traced. In Donaldson's ‘Collection’ there is a poem by Pitcairne, under the assumed name of Walter Denestone, on ‘The King and Queen of Fairy,’
