THIS WEEK'S GREAT DAY.

Auckland Star, Volume LX, Issue 9, 11 January 1929, Page 6

THIS WEEK'S GREAT DAY.

JAN. 11—DEATH OF SIR HANS SLOANE. One hundred and seventy-six years ago, on January 11, 1753, Sir Hans Sloane, one of the most distinguished men of his day, who was deservedly honoured for his wonderful work as a physician, naturalist, collector and philanthropist, died at the age of 93.

Hβ was of Scottish descent, but was born at Killyleagh, in Ireland, on April 16, 1660, his father being the chief of the Scots colony which had been settled in Ulster by King James I. Even as a boy Sloane was a keen collector of curiosities and objects of natural history and when he commenced to practise medicine in London, which was soon after he secured his degree in 1683, he was already far-famed as a collector, and was elected a member of the Royal Society and a Fellow of the College of Physicians.

In 1687 he went to Jamaica to act as physician to the Governor, and during his stay of 15 months in the West Indies he made a collection of over 800 different species of plants, and secured the material for his famous book, "The Natural History of Jamaica." This work was the means of introducing into the Pharmacopoeia many valuable drugs which had hitherto been unknown to medical science, while the plants which he took back to London formed the nucleus of his splendid private museum.

For more than half a century Sloane was Britain's leading physician, and during this period he was the recipient of numerous honours. He was made a baronet in 1716, he succeeded Sir Isaac Newton in the presidency of the Royal Society, he was appointed Physician-General to the Army and the Navy, and was elected president of the College of Physicians. In 1743 he retired to his country home at Chelsea, of which he had purchased the manorship 31 years earlier, and there he spent the rest of his life arranging his wonderful collection of plants and curiosities, which he directed should be offered to the nation at his death for the sum of £20,000, about a-quarter of its real value. The collection included 200 volumes of dried plants, many thousands of natural history specimens, a library of 50,000 books and 41,000 manuscripts, and a large number of coins, prints, drawings and various curiosities. Sloane's offer was accepted by the Government and the collection, which was secured by a special Act of Parliament, passed soon after his death, formed, with the addition of the Harleian Manuscripts and the Cottonian Library, the original contents of the British Museum, which was first opened to the public in 1759. Sloane devoted the whole of the salaries which he received from his many official appointments to charitable purposes, and he was one of the founders of the Foundling Hospital. In 1721 he presented the. freehold of the famous Physic Gardens at Chelsea to the Apothecaries' Company, and stipulated that it was "at all times to be continued as a physic garden, for the manifestation of the power and wisdom and goodness of God in creation, and that the apprentices might learn to distinguish good and useful plants from hurtfurones."