A Visit to Seventeenth-Century Jamaica
One of my favourite letters in Hans Sloane’s correspondence is one written by twenty-eight year old Sloane to Sir Edward Herbert on the 17th of April, 1688 (British Library, Sloane MS 4068, ff. 7-9)....
View ArticleAbsence Makes the Heart Grow Fonder: Early Modern Friendship
By Alice Marples We all miss our friends – whether they leave for study, work or holidays, their sudden absence in our daily lives can leave a bit of a gap. Most of us are fortunate enough to expect to...
View ArticleAn early eighteenth-century ghost
By Felicity Roberts One of the most entertaining set of letters in Sir Hans Sloane’s correspondence was written by William Derham (1657-1735), the rector at Upminster in Essex and an enthusiastic...
View ArticleSloane Family Recipes
In his Recipes Project post, Arnold Hunt focused on the recipe books owned by Sir Hans Sloane. The Sloane family may have had an illustrious physician and collector in their midst, but they, too,...
View ArticleA Friend in Need is a Friend Indeed
By James Hawkes Saving lives may have been Sir Hans Sloane’s day job as a physician, but in one case he even saved a friend from the hangman: Patrick Blair, who had been sentenced to death for high...
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Eighteenth-Century Pain and the Modern Problem of Measuring Pain
The offending machine. A Saskatchewan example. Image credit: Daryl Mitchell, Wikimedia Commons. I read the news about the recent study using fMRI to measure physical and emotional pain intensity right...
View ArticleHans Sloane’s Birthday: Tales from the Sloane Correspondence
[View the story “Hans Sloane’s Birthday: Tales from the Sloane Correspondence” on Storify]
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Sloane: Part of the Family
By Alice Marples When thinking about famous figures in the history of science, it can sometimes be easy to forget that they were not working in isolation. A lot of recent research has focused on...
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Close Call at Bloomsbury Square
By Matthew De Cloedt Hanging Outside Newgate Prison. Credit: Wikimedia Commons When John Ray received Hans Sloane’s letter of 6 April 1700 he could not help “but be moved with indignation”. He was...
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Repentance on the Scaffold
Tyburn Tree. Credit: Wikimedia Commons Filled with curiosities, rare books, and commodities from Port Royal to Peking, Hans Sloane’s Bloomsbury Square residence was the perfect target for a break and...
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