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 in entertaining scientific men 
and studying his collections, to which no doubt he added, so that 
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