THE HISTORY OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY

Series One: The Papers of Sir Hans Sloane, 1660-1753 from the British Library, London

Parts 4 and 5: Alchemy, Chemistry and Magic

Filming the Sloane Collection

The Sloane collection is one of the great foundational collections of the British Library and runs to over 4,000 manuscripts on all manner of subjects from literature to mathematics, alchemy to medicine, and from travel journals to bundles of correspondence.  There is also material on art, law, horology, theology and zoology.

The idea that we should film this collection was first proposed by the late Roy Porter who described it as an unparalleled resource for the study of early science and medicine; for the study of London and Britain’s maritime reach; and for the study of institutions from the company of adventurers, to glass-makers; and from the Royal Society, to schools for orphans.

It was never going to be practical to film the entire collection in a single numerical sequence, so we chose to divide it into thematic clusters covering:

• Science and Society, 1660-1773 (Part 1)
• Voyages of Discovery, 1492-1750  (Parts 2 & 3)
• Alchemy, Chemistry, Magic and the Occult  (Parts 4 & 5)
• The History of Medicine, Surgery and Anatomy  (Parts 6, 7 & 8)
• Foundations of Botany, Zoology and Natural History  (Part 9)

So far, in Parts 1 through 5, and in our East Meets West (Kaempfer) and Renaissance Man (John Dee) projects, we have managed to cover 390 manuscripts and the following concordance serves as a checklist, showing which manuscripts have been included in which part.

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