Sir Hans Sloane

Physician, born in Killyleagh, Co Down, SE Northern Ireland, UK. He studied in London and in France, and settled in London as a physician, but spent 1685–6 in Jamaica, collecting a herbarium of 800 species. His museum and library of 50 000 volumes and 3560 manuscripts formed the nucleus of the British Museum.

Sir Hans Sloane (1660–1753) was an Ulster-Scot collector and physician.

He was born on April 16, 1660 at Killyleagh in County Down, Ireland, where his father, who died when he was six years old, had settled as the head of a Scottish colony sent over by James I.

Even as a youth, he collected objects of natural history and other curiosities. After four years in London he travelled through France, spending some time at Paris and Montpellier, and taking his M.D. He returned to London with a considerable collection of plants and other curiosities, of which the former were sent to Ray and utilized by him for his History of Plants.

Sloane was quickly elected into the Royal Society, and at the same time he attracted the notice of Thomas Sydenham, who gave him valuable introductions to practice. In 1687, he became fellow of the College of Physicians, and went to Jamaica the same year as physician in the suite of the Duke of Albemarle. The duke died soon after landing, and Sloane's visit lasted only fifteen months; While in Jamaica, Sloane was introduced to cocoa as a drink favoured by the local people. Eventually, in the nineteenth century, it was being taken up by Messrs Cadbury who manufactured chocolate using Sloane's recipe. In the pamphlets written concerning the sale by Dr William Cockburn (1669-1739) of his secret remedy for dysentery and other fluxes, it was stated for the defence that Sloane himself did not disdain the same kind of professional conduct; and some colour is given to that charge by the fact that his only medical publication, an Account of a Medicine for Soreness, Weakness and other Distempers of the Eyes (London, 1745) was not given to the world until its author was in his eighty-fifth year and had retired from practice.

In 1716, Sloane was created a baronet, the first medical practitioner to receive an hereditary title, and in 1719 he became president of the College of Physicians, holding the office sixteen years.

Sloane's fame is based on his judicious investments rather than what he contributed to the subject of natural science or even of his own profession. His purchase of the manor of Chelsea, London in 1712, provided the grounds for the Chelsea Physic Garden as well as perpetuating his memory in the name of a "place," a street, and a square.

When Sloane retired in 1741, his library and cabinet of curiosities, which he took with him from Bloomsbury to his house in Chelsea, had grown to be of unique value. The bequest was accepted on those terms by an act passed the same year, and the collection, together with George II's royal library, etc., was opened to the public at Bloomsbury as the British Museum in 1759.

Sloane Square and Sloane Gardens in the borough of Chelsea and Kensington are named after Sir Hans.

See Weld, History of the Royal Society, i.