Sloane

Sloane, SIR HANS, physician and naturalist, was born at Killyleagh, County Down, 16th April 1660, the son of an Ulster Scot. He devoted himself to natural history and medicine, and in spite of an attack of hæmoptysis, which lasted from his sixteenth till his nineteenth year, he arrived in London in 1679 a well-read student. His appren- ticeship to Stafforth, a pupil of Stahl, and his friendship with Boyle and Ray did much to encourage and advance him in his favourite studies. In France he attended the lectures of Tournefort and Duverney, and obtained on his return, by the active support of Sydenham, a footing in London as a physician. Already F.R.S., he spent over a year (1685-86) in Jamaica, collecting a herbarium of 800 species; and after his return became physician to Christ's Hospital (1694-1724), President of the College of Physicians (1719-35), Secretary to the Royal Society (1693), Foreign Associate of the French Academy (1708), and Sir Isaac Newton's successor as President of the Royal Society (1727). He had been created a baronet and physician-general to the army in 1716, and in 1727 was appointed royal physician. Though of remarkably delicate constitution, he lived to the great age of ninety-two, dying at Chelsea, 11th January 1753. His museum and library of 50,000 volumes and 3560 MSS., offered at his death to the nation for £20,000, formed the commencement of the British Museum (q.v.). He contributed numerous memoirs to the Philosophical Transactions, and published in 1745 a treatise on medicine for the eyes. But his great work was the Natural History of Jamaica (fol. 1707-25).