GARDENS OF CELEBRITIES 



and travelling through Languedoc collecting plants. Soon after 

 his return to London he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society, 

 and two years later a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians. 

 Sloan had long wished to visit the tropics, and when, in 1687, the 

 Duke of Albemarle was appointed governor of Jamaica, Sloan 

 accompanied him as physician. The premature death of the 

 Duke cut short his visit, but not before he had made large collec- 

 tions of plants in the West Indies ; and although only fifteen 

 months in Jamaica, he contrived to collect an enormous number 

 of specimens. In 1694, Dr. Sloan was appointed physician to 

 Christ's Hospital, an office he retained for fourteen years ; and 

 shortly after, he married the wealthy daughter of a London alder- 

 man. Of four children born to him and her, two daughters alone 

 survived their parents/ They married into the aristocratic families 

 of Stanley and Cadogan ; their names, and Sir Hans Sloan's, are 

 perpetuated in several well-known streets and squares in the 

 manor of Chelsea. Sloan was the first of his profession to receive 

 hereditary honours, George I. conferring a baronetcy on him in 

 1716, and afterwards making him physician to the Forces. He 

 was principal physician to George II., and he succeeded the illus- 

 trious Sir Isaac Newton as President of the Royal Society, holding 

 office to the age of eighty. He was also President of the Royal 

 College of Physicians. Honours indeed crowded upon this dis- 

 tinguished man. His exhaustive Latin catalogue of the plants 

 of Jamaica, and the two folio volumes he published later, must 

 have involved great labour and expense ; but, otherwise, his own 

 contributions to science were not remarkable. He was, for that 

 day, a good physician, with an extensive practice among the 

 upper classes ; and from his youth, when his tastes and industry 

 brought him into touch with Robert Boyle, one of the founders 

 of the Royal Society, and with Ray, the naturalist, elsewhere 

 mentioned in this book, he was up to advanced age, an indefatigable 

 collector in the realm of natural science. So early as 1701, his own 

 collections were enriched by the inherited cabinet of William Courten, 

 another collector, and when, at the age of eighty, he removed 

 from Bloomsbury, and retired from active work to the enjoyment 

 of his estate at Chelsea, his treasures were of unique value. He 

 spent the closing years of his life hi entertaining scientific men 

 and studying his collections, to which no doubt he added, so that 



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