John Bell (traveller)

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John Bell, Scottish doctor and traveller, was born at Antermony, near Milton of Campsie in Scotland in 1691. He studied medicine in Glasgow and in 1714 set out for St Petersburg, where, through the introduction of a fellow Scot, he was nominated medical attendant to Artemy Petrovich Volynsky, recently appointed to the Persian embassy, with whom he travelled from 1715 to 1718. The next four years he spent in an embassy to China, passing through Siberia and the great Tatar deserts. He had scarcely rested from this last journey when he was summoned to attend Peter the Great in his expedition to Derbend and the Caspian Gates. In 1738 he was sent by the Russian government on a mission to Constantinople, returning in May to St Petersburg. It appears that after this he was for several years established as a merchant at Constantinople, where he married in 1746. In the following year he retired to his estate of Antermony, where he spent the remainder of his life. He died in 1780 and is buried in Campsie Glen. His travels, published at Glasgow in 1763, were speedily translated into French, and widely circulated in Europe.