Born of a respectable north-country family, Garth was educated first at a provincial school, and then at Cambridge. He was admitted a Fellow of the College of Physicians on June 26, 1692, just when the quarrel of the Physicians and Apothecaries was waxing to its hottest, _i. e._ between the College edict of 1687, ordaining gratuitous advice, and the creation of the dispensary in 1696. As a young man he saw that his right place was with the dispensarians--and he took it. For a time his great poem, "The Dispensary," covered the apothecaries and anti-dispensarians with ridicule. It rapidly passed through numerous editions--in each of which, as was elegantly observed, the world lost and gained much. To say that of all the books, pamphlets, and broad-sheets thrown out by the combatants on both sides, it is by far the one of the greatest merit, would be scant justice, when it might almost be said that it is the only one of them that can now be read by a gentleman without a sense of annoyance and disgust. There is no point of view from which the medical profession appears in a more humiliating and contemptible light than that which the literature of this memorable squabble presents to the student. Charges of ignorance, dishonesty, and extortion were preferred on both sides; and the dispensarian physicians did not hesitate to taunt their brethren of the opposite camp with playing corruptly into the hands of the apothecaries--prescribing enormous and unnecessary quantities of medicine, so that the drug-venders might make heavy bills, and, as a consequence, recommend in all directions such complacent _superiors_ to be called in. Garth's poem, unfair and violent though it is, seldom offends against decency. As a work of art it cannot be ranked high, and is now deservedly forgotten, although it has many good lines, and some felicitous satire. Johnson rightly pointed to the secret of its success, though he took a one-sided and unjust view of the dissensions which called it forth. "The poem," observes the biographer, "as its subject was present and popular, co-operated with passions and prejudices then prevalent; and, with such auxiliaries to its intrinsic merit, was universally and liberally applauded. It was on the side of charity against the intrigues of interest, and of regular learning against licentious usurpation of medical authority." Sir Samuel Garth (knighted by the sword of Marlborough) died January 18, 1718-19, and was buried at Harrow-on-the-Hill.