THE HISTORY OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY
Series One: The Papers of Sir Hans Sloane, 1660-1753 from the British Library, London

Part 1: Science & Society, 1660-1773

"Recent scholarship on the early history of the Royal Society has led to a re-evaluation of scientific research in the seventeenth century.  Sir Hans Sloane, who played such an important part in collecting and publishing scientific work, likewise deserves more attention: a more detailed examination of his scientific correspondence, his editorial policies in the 'Philosophical Transactions', and his medical practice."
Maarten Ultee, writing in the British Library Journal, Vol 14, No 1.

Sir Hans Sloane, 1^st baronet, 1660-1753, succeeded Sir Isaac Newton as the President of the Royal Society and held that post for fifteen years from 1727 to 1741. He had previously served as Secretary from 1693 to 1712 and was responsible for reviving the Philosophical Transactions. An eminent physician (his patients included Queen Anne and King George II, and he was physician to Christ’s Hospital from 1694 to 1730), he was also President of the Royal College of Physicians from 1719 to 1735. He studied in Paris and Montpellier and his flourishing connections with European scientists resulted in his election as a foreign member of the Academy of Sciences at Paris, St Petersburg and Madrid. He founded the Botanical Garden in Chelsea in 1721 and his early travels to the West Indies provided the basis for his Voyage to the Islands of Madeira, Barbados, Nieves, St Christopher’s and Jamaica (London, 1707 and 1725) which drew admiration from contemporaries such as John Ray.

The Sloane manuscripts reflect all of these interests and more, because Sloane is also remembered as the greatest collector in an age of great collectors. He retained many of his papers relating to the Royal Society and the Royal College of Physicians and those concerning the foundation of hospitals and asylums for the insane. He acquired groups of papers of contemporary scientists such as Boyle and Hooke. He organised his own correspondence into 34 large volumes. He assiduously collected earlier material as well, with particular attention to manuscript accounts of travels and voyages of discovery, and works on Alchemy, Art, Astrology, Astronomy, Bibliography, Botany, Chemistry, Geography, Grammar, History, Law, Magic, Mathematics, Medicine, Natural History, Numismatics, Poetry, Theology and Zoology. These manuscripts date from the early medieval period and include such pearls as a contemporary fourteenth century manuscript copy of John Arderne’s Liber Medicinarum, extensive manuscripts concerning the teaching of Bombast von Hohenheim (called Paracelsus), the original holograph notes of William Harvey’s lectures on anatomy, Englebert Kaempfer’s own journals and notes concerning his travels in Japan, Persia and the Far East in the seventeenth century, and manuscripts of leading figures from Wolsey to Walpole.

When he died on 11 January 1753, Sloane’s Museum and Library were offered to the nation for £20,000, in accordance with his will, as he had hoped that they would provide the foundation of a great National Library. His wishes were fulfilled and the collections were bought from the proceeds of a public lottery under the Act of Parliament 26 Geo. II, cap. 22, from which the British Museum and the British Library date their inception.

Together with the Cotton and Harleian manuscripts which were purchased through the same Act, the Sloane manuscripts have retained the name of their original collector, with a separate numeration, 1-4100. They also form the basis of the British Library’s great, ongoing Additional Manuscripts series which commences numeration with Add. Ms. 4101. Further Sloane materials appear as Add. Mss. 5018-5027 and 5214-5308.

The scope of the Sloane manuscripts is so vast that it would not be helpful or sustainable to publish them all in a single numerical sequence. What we have chosen to do instead is to publish the manuscripts in thematic groupings so that every published part of our project has a value and a unity in itself. Some of the major themes that are covered in this series are:

- Science and Society, 1660-1773
- Voyages of Discovery, 1450-1750
- Alchemy, Chemistry, Magic and the Occult
- The History of Medicine, Surgery and Anatomy
- Foundations of Botany, Zoology and Natural History
- Astrology, Astronomy and Horology

Selections are made on the basis of a careful examination of the existing finding aids, consultation with scholars and an examination of individual manuscripts at the British Library. Edward J L Scott’s Index to the Sloane Manuscripts in the British Museum (London, 1904; reprinted 1971) is the only published guide describing the riches of the collection and this has proved invaluable. However, extensive use has also been made of the numerically organised descriptive listing of the Sloane collection which can be consulted in its original manuscript form (in nineteen volumes, it has never been published) in the British Library’s Department of Manuscripts.

There is inevitably some overlap between the themes covered by individual manuscripts (one only has to think of the range of entries in a typical renaissance commonplace book) and where a volume is deemed to be absolutely critical to more than one theme it will be included more than once. However, our general policy is not to duplicate items but to provide cross-references in our listings where appropriate.

Each part is accompanied by a detailed descriptive guide based on existing published and unpublished finding aids and on our own research. The aim of these guides is to provide a quick and easy access to the microfilm edition rather than to be a definitive scholarly catalogue. However, it is hoped that they will serve to draw attention to the research potential of the archive and that they will provide a level of detail sufficient to satisfy the needs of most researchers. The details provided by each guide will inevitably vary to suit the requirements of the materials included in the part (correspondence volumes need to be described differently from lengthy manuscript texts) but it is planned that a composite index of authors and correspondents and a concordance of volumes included (with references to the microfilm reels on which they may be found) will be included as the series progresses.

The first part of this series, based on the then Science and Society, 1660-1773 makes available the complete sequence of Sloane’s own prodigious correspondence (Sloane Mss. 4036-4069) which features prolonged exchanges of detailed letters between Sloane and many of the leading British and European scholars of his time.

It includes letters to and from Patrick Adair, John Amman, Jean Anisson, John Aubrey, John Bagford, Erik Benzelius, Abb Jean-Paul Bignon (Librarian to Louis XV) (76 letters), Patrick Blair (67 letters), Jacob Bobart, Herman Boerhaave, Charles du Bois, Gideon Bonnivert, Col. William Byrd (of Virginia), the Earl of Chesterfield, Cordonnier de Saint Hyacinthe, James Cuninghame (Physician in China), Sir Thomas Dereham, Pierre Desmaizeaux, John Evelyn, John Flamsteed, Bernard le Bovier de Fontenelle, Benjamin Franklin, Etienne Geoffroy, Edmund Gibson, Edmond Halley, Thomas Hearne, Anna Hermann, Thomas Isted, Philippus Josephus de Jarriges, Antoine de Jussieu, Bernard de Jussieu, James Keill, Jacobus Theodorus Klein, Jean Rodolfe Lavater, Gottfried Leibnitz, Carl Linnaeus, John Locke, John Madden, Sauveur Morand, William Musgrave, Sir Isaac Newton, Alexander Orme, Samuel Pepys, James Petivar, Alexander Pope (a good letter concerning his grotto), Charles Preston, John Ray (over 100 letters), Richard Richardson, Schpflin, Albertus Seba, William Sherard, Mary Somerset (and her husband, the Duke of Beaufort), Sir Robert Southwell (Secretary of State for Ireland), Johann Steigerthal, Thomas Tanner, Ralph Thoresby, John Thorpe, Robert Uvedale, Antonio Vallisneri, Harman Verelst, Richard Waller, Horace Walpole, Robert Walpole, Humfrey Wanley, John Welbe (a proposal for "A Voyage Round the Globe for the Discovery of Terra Australis Incognita), John Woodward, John Thomas de Woolhouse, James Yonge, Zanoni, Philip Henry Zollman and Theodor Zwinger.

The volume and detail of this correspondence bring to life the concerns of late-seventeenth and eighteenth century scientific society, especially themes such as:

- the interconnected nature of world science
- the role of the nobility and patronage in science
- the desire to map out the world and discover new lands
- the movement towards clarifying and codifying all animals and plants
- the role of the virtuoso and of scientific societies
- the use of microscopes and pioneer work in preventative medicine
- the foundation of scientific method based on Newtonian analysis and synthesis

The second theme, Voyages of Discovery, 1450-1750, forms Parts 2 and 3 of this series. This includes his substantial collection of manuscript accounts of voyages and travels featuring an account of the travels of Marco Polo, two accounts of Columbus’s early voyages, Englebert Kaempfer’s original, seventeenth century journals concerning his travels in Persia, Japan and the Far East, and many contemporary and holograph records of Richard Bell, Adriano de las Cartes, William Cowley, John Cox, the Earl of Cumberland, Louis Desmay, Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex, Francis Drake, Robert Dudley, the Earl of Leicester, Martin Frobisher, William Hack, John Hawkins, Lord Howard, John Jourdain, Bartolome de Lascasas, Henry Maynwaringe, William Munson, Nathaniel Peckett, William Penn, Walter Raleigh, Pedro Baretto de Rosende, Captain Bartholomew Sharp, Richard Simson, Luis Paez de Torres, and Nicolai Warkottschii. These document voyages and travels to Africa, the Americas, China, India, Japan, the East and West indies and Russia, and attempts to circumnavigate the world, discover the North-West and North-East passages, and find the Great Southern Land. There are also many fine maps and charts (such as Charles II’s presentation copy of Hack’s South Sea Waggoner), and works on geography, navigation, the navy and naval warfare (including an account of the burning of Cadiz) and on trade (with details of grants given to African, American and Indian trading companies).