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Dromo's Den
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[Up] [Dromo's Den] Hans Sloane Biography SLOANE, slōn, Sir Hans (1660–1753). A British physician and naturalist. He was born in Ireland of Scottish parents and was educated in London and in France. He was elected a member of the Royal Society in 1685 and of the Royal College of Physicians in 1687. He was physician to Christ's Hospital (1694–1724), president of the College of Physicians (1719–1735), secretary to the Royal Society (1693), in the presidency of which he succeeded Sir Isaac Newton in 1727. He had been created a baronet and physician-general to the army in 1716, and in 1727 received the further honor of being appointed royal physician. He gave a strong impulse to the practice of inoculation by performing that operation on several of the royal family. He formed a museum of natural history, antiquities, coins, etc., and a library of 50,000 volumes and 3560 manuscripts, which he directed to be offered at his death to the nation for £20,000, and which formed the commencement of the British Museum (q.v.). He contributed numerous memoirs to the Philosophical Transactions, whose publication he superintended for a number of years, and published in 1745 a treatise on medicine for the eyes. The New International Encyclopaedia, Vol. XXI (New York: Dodd, Mead & Co., 1920) 176. |