Abstract
A TEMPORARY exhibit of a selection of minerals and botanical specimens and books from the Sloane collections is now displayed in a lighted case in the Central Hall of the Natural History Museum at South Kensington. It was these collections that formed the nucleus of the British Museum in 1753, and they contain many objects of considerable intrinsic value and of historic interest. A recent study of the voluminous MS. catalogues written by Sloane himself has led to the identification of many mineral specimens belonging to his collection. There is a good series of “pretious stones”, including a magnificent Indian-cut sapphire weighing 31.5 carats, and a wonderful series of objects carved in agate, mocha-stone, carnelian, jasper, rock-crystal, nephrite, lapis-lazuli, etc. Most interesting are two drawers with the original labels from an old cabinet of minerals supposed to have medicinal virtues and listed as ‘officinalis’. Sir Hans Sloane was a celebrated physician—it was he who certified the death of Queen Anne in 1714; and he succeeded Sir Isaac Newton as president of the Royal Society. One of the quaint entries in his MS. catalogue reads: “Lapis variolosus if hung about the Person makes the small Pox come favourable and hinders their being mark'd from its Signature”. The Sloane collections were formerly in the old Manor House of Chelsea (built by Henry VIII), and his memory is preserved in a dozen streets, places, and squares named Hans or Sloane.
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Sir Hans Sloane's Collections. Nature 133, 131 (1934). https://doi.org/10.1038/133131b0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/133131b0