ABERCROMBY  , :

DAVID, a 17th-century Scottish physician who was sufficiently noteworthy a generation after the probable date of his death to have his Nova Medicinae Praxis reprinted at Paris in 1740 . During his lifetime his Tula ac efficax luis venereae saepe absque mercurio -ac semper absque salivatione mercuriali curando methodus (1684) was translated into French, Dutch and German . Two other works by him were De Pulsus Variatione (London, 1685), and Ars explorandi medicos facilitates plantarum ex solo sapore (London, 1685–1688) . His Opuscula were collected in 1687 . These professional writings gave him a place and memorial in A. von Haller's Bibliotheca Medicinae Pract . (4 vols . 8vo, 1779, tom. iii. p . 629); but he claims notice rather by his remarkable controversial books in theology and philosophy than by his medical writings . Bred up at Douai as a Jesuit, he abjured popery, and published Protestancy proved Safer, than Popery (London, 1686) . But the most noticeable of his productions is A Discourse of Wit (London, 1.685), which contains some of the most characteristic and most definitely-put metaphysical opinions of the Scottish philosophy of common sense . It was followed by Academia Scientiarum (1687), and by A Moral . Treatise of the Power of Interest (169o), dedicated to Robert Boyle .

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Short Account of Scots Divines, by him, was printed at Edinburgh in 1833, edited by James Maidment . The exact date of his death is unknown, but ac-cording to Haller he was alive early in the 18th century .