SLOANE, Sir }LANs, an eminent physician and naturalist, of Scotch parentage, his father having been the chief of the Scottish colony which was settled in Ulster by James I. of Great Britain, was born at Killyleagh, in county Down, Ireland, Apr11 16, 1660. He devoted himself during his boyhood to natural history and medicine, and in spite of an attack of hmmoptysis, which lasted from his 16th till his 19th year, he arrived in London in 1679, with an excellent knowledge of the first of these sciences, and a fair acquaintance with the second. His appienticeship to Statforth, a pupil of Stahl (q.v.), and the acquaintance, subsequently ripened into close friendship, which he formed with Boyle and Ray, two of the most celebrated naturalists of their time, did much to encour age and advance him in his favorite studies. During a brief sojourn in France he attended the lectures of Tournefort and Du Verney, obtained on his return, by the active support of Sydenham (q.v.), a footing in London as a physician, and was elected a mem ber of the royal society in 168a and of the royal college of physicians in 1687;.but in September of the latter year, he accompanied Monk, duke of Albemarle, to Jamaica, and investigated the botany of that and the adjoining islands with such zeal and diligence during the 15 months of his stay, that his herbarium numbered 800 species. Resuming his professional practice on his return, he became physician to Christ's hospital (1694 1724), president • of the college of physicians (1719-1735), secretary to the royal society (1693), foreign associate of the French academy of sciences (1708), and succeeded sir Isaac Newton as president of the royal society in 1727. He had been created a baronet
and physician-general to the army in 1716; and in 1727 received the further honor of being appointed royal physician. Though of remarkably delicate constitution he lived to the great age of 62, dying at Chelsea, Jan. 11, 1753. The chief point to be remarked in Sloane's moral Character was his benevolence, as shown in the charitable uses to which he applied the whole of his salary as physician of Christ s hospital, in his zealous promo tion of the various schemes for affording medicine and attendance gratuitously to the poor, and his support of the foundling hospital, of which he was one of the founders. By lone.-continued perseverance he succeeded in forming a most extensive museum of naturalhistory, a library of 50,000 volumes, and 3,560 MSS., which he directed to be offered at his death to the nation for £20,000 (about one-fourth of its real value), and which formed the commencement of the. British Museum (q.v.). He also contributed numerous memoirs to the Pkilosoph.jcal Transactions, whose publication he superintended for a number of years. But his great work was the Natural History of Jamaica (fol. 1707-1725), containing also an excellent account of the topography, meteorology, and population of the island, which book was the means of introducing into the pharma copoeia a number of excellent drugs, hitherto unknown.