Duncan Campbell

The history of the life and adventures of Mr. Duncan Campbell

Duncan Campbell (c. 1680–1730) was a Scottish deaf and mute man and professed soothsayer.

Life Campbell claimed he had been raised in Lapland, after his father became shipwrecked, whereupon he met Campbell's mother. Following the death of his mother, Campbell and his father moved to Scotland. This account has been questioned in later years, as Campbell may have manufactured his Lappish childhood to make his claims as a mystic more believable. Campbell went on to learn how to read and write. It consists of two letters, the first by Duncan Campbell, giving an account of an illness which attacked him in 1717, and continued nearly eight years, until his good genius appeared and revealed that he could be cured by the use of the lodestone; the second on genii or familiar spirits, with an account of a marvellous sympathetic powder which had been brought from the East. A postscript informed the readers that at 'Dr. Campbell's house, in Buckingham Court, over against Old Man's Coffee House, at Charing Cross, they may be readily furnished with his "Pulvis Miraculosus", and finest sort of Egyptian loadstones.' It was probably written by William Bond; the traditional attribution to Daniel Defoe is now considered implausible.

On 18 June 1720, there appeared a pamphlet entitled Mr. Campbell's Pacquet.' This was edited by Bond; This pamphlet was by Eliza Haywood.