Category: Collecting

Giants’ Shoulders #55: Curiosities, Utility and Authority

Posted on January 16, 2013 by - Collecting, History of Medicine, History of Science, Museums, Travel

Welcome to the 55th edition of The Giants’ Shoulders, a blog carnival that rounds up history of science blogging from the last month. This carnival takes as themes three issues that would have been very familiar to eighteenth-century collector and physician, Sir Hans Sloane: curiosities, utility and authority.

Richard Greene’s museum at Lichfield, the “Lichfield clock”
Credit: Wellcome Library, London.

Curiosities for Sloane were wide ranging and could include interesting natural objects, strange stories, or ingenius man-made ones. Over at depictedscience there is an excerpt from Robert Hooke’s Micrographia (1664): a detailed picture of a fly as seen through a magnifying glass, along with a short description. Strange stories always captured the interest of early modern scientific minds. Adrienne Mayor at Wonders and Marvels writes on Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and a sea monster, while Laetitia Barber at Morbid Anatomy has some ideas on making your own ghosts. New inventions showed human ingenuity, such as the umbrella-vator from the 1780s (The Appendix tumblr) and the stethoscope (The Rose Melnick Medical Museum). Richard Carter at The Friends of Darwin porposes a theory for what some ancient Roman jars might be, reminding me of early Philosophical Transactions letters. But the greatest curiosity of all this month is the ideal historian of science spotted over at The Renaissance Mathematicus, though perhaps Thomas Young the polymath, discussed at OpenScientist, might have fit the bill.

Sloane, like many eighteenth-century people, believed that knowledge should be beneficial, especially to society as a whole. From Seb Falk we learn that knowing how to use an astrolabe could save your life, while Jonathon Keats at Culture Lab wonders whether the science in Sherlock Holmes stories would actually have worked. Maria Popova (Brain Pickings) recounts the tale of Charles Babbage’s fight against noise pollution, a battle that he eventually (sort of) won. Jai Virdi has a series of posts, starting with “The Pretensions of Dr. Turnbull“, that look at the nineteenth-century debates about the efficacy of Turbull’s treatments for deafness. Turnbull’s methods may have been in question, but Alfred Russel Wallace’s 1876 map of evolution in the natural world has stood the test of time, since it was only just updated in 2012. RIP to Rita Levi-Montalcini, a truly useful person who brought benefits to society throughout her life. She recently died at the age of 103 after a full life in which she overcame anti-semitism, a male-dominated establishment and scientific dogma — and won the Nobel prize.

Sloane lived at a time when medical and scientific authority was in flux, as they tried to establish who should be considered reliable–a question that hasn’t gone away, just changed form. Seth LeJacq discusses the different treatments for breast cancer preferred by early modern surgeons and their patients, while Vanessa Heggie considers the history of dieting advice. Kirsten Walsh at Early Modern Experimental Philosophy suggests that Isaac Newton and his contemporary experimental philosophers had fundamentally different worldviews, while Thony Christie asks who kept Stephen Grey from publishing in the Philosophical Transactions. Possibly Sloane… In December, there was a hullabaloo about science, authority, and criticism, which is summed up nicely by Rebekah Higgit who wonders what scientists and historians each bring to the analysis of science in society.

Museums are sites where authority, utility, and curiosity all come together, much as they did in Sloane’s own collections. At American Science, Lukas Rieppel ponders the rise and fall of a research mission in a natural history museum: what does it say about the broader society when a museum decides that research is no longer important? Sloane, who collected so that he might understand the world around him, would have been troubled by the lack of curiosity in curiosities.

Giants’ Shoulders #56 will be hosted by Michael Barton (@darwinsbulldog) at The Dispersal of Darwin on February 16. See you there!

Sir Hans Sloane’s Will of 1739

Posted on January 11, 2013 by - Collecting, Early Modern History, Family, Hans Sloane, Hans Sloane's Personal Life, History of Science, Museums, Religion

Sir Hans Sloane died on this day, 11 January 1753. Sloane, as I’ve noted before, is notoriously tricky to find since his letters are scattered and he wrote relatively little. His will is, oddly enough, one of the few documents that provides hints of the man behind the collection. Here, I’ll focus on the 1739 version of his will.[1]

Portrait of Sir Hans Sloane. Credit: Wellcome Library, London.

Sloane’s wishes were simple in the first instance: to be buried in Chelsea, to have his intimates invited to the funeral, and that his friends be given rings worth twenty shillings. His landed estates were divided into thirds for his eldest daughter Mrs Stanley, youngest daughter Lady Cadogan, and his niece Fowler (who was in the Elsmere family). He also left any of his “live rare animals” to the care of the Duke of Richmond.

Considering the size of his collections and properties, he left relatively modest bequests. Perhaps he was cash-strapped. Indeed, he made alternative provisions for his heirs in case the sale of the collections didn’t raise sufficient funds! He left fifty pounds each to his nephew William Sloane, sister Alice Elsmere and to her son Sloane Elsmere, but £200 to each of her two daughters. His grandson Hans Stanley and a John Roberts of Lincoln’s Inn received £100. Notably, the most vulnerable family members–unmarried nieces and young men–received the largest gifts.

His bequests to servants were comparatively generous. Two of his named servants, Henry Darlington and Martha Katling, were to receive an annuity of ten pounds for the rest of their lives, while all of his servants would receive one full year’s wages in addition to wages owed and five pounds to buy mourning clothes.[2]

What he saw as his greatest legacy, however, were the intangibles. When it came to his daughters, relations, and friends, he “earnestly recommend[ed] to them the practice of moral and religious duties, as being of greater use to them than any thing I can leave them”. This would help them “through the difficulties of [life], with more inward quiet, satisfaction and better health than otherways, and with the esteem and respect of their friends and acquaintance”.

Sloane also valued his collection not for its worth or objects, but for the reasons why he had collected. He wrote at length about how and why he had built his collections.

From my youth I have been a great observer and admirer of the wonderful power, wisdom and contrivance of the Almighty God, appearing in the works of his Creation; and have gathered together many things in my own travels or voyages, or had them from others.

One of these “others” was William Courten, his “ever honoured, late friend”, who had left him an entire collection. To this collection, Sloane had added printed and manuscript books, “natural and artificial curiosities, precious stones, books of dryed samples of plants, miniatures, drawings, prints, medals”. Sloane’s collection was now valued at over £50000.

Sloane hoped that his executors (son-in-law Charles Lord Cadogan, nephew William Sloane and Chelsea rector Sloane Elsmere) would keep the collection together as something that would not just outlast him, but because it had wider uses: “the manifestation of the glory of God, the confutation of atheism and its consequences, the use and improvement of physic, and other arts and sciences, and benefit of mankind”. For Sloane, it seems that he real importance of his collections was knowledge of the natural world and a deeper understanding of God.

More specifically, though, his will and desire was that the government of Great Britain would understand the collection’s true value and purchase it at the bargain price of £20000. To this end, Sloane requested that his friends who had access to the King, George II–the Duke of Richmond, Lord Cadogan, Sir Robert Walpole, Sir Paul Methuen and Mr. Edgcombe–would intercede on his behalf. If Britain refused, the collection should be offered to (in this order) the Royal Society, Oxford University, Edinburgh College of Physicians, Paris Academy of Sciences, St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences, Berlin Academy of Sciences or Madrid Academy of Sciences.

Later codicils to the will are intriguing, hinting at Sloane’s changing self-perception and public interest in his collections over time. Servants received more money. He rethought the list of potential buyers for the collection. And, above all, he emphasised the ways in which his collections would benefit the British nation. But that is subject enough for another post!

[1] Sir Hans Sloane, The Will of Sir Hans Sloane, Bart. Deceased (London, 1753).

[2] 10 pounds in 1753 is worth approximately 850 pounds today, while 100 pounds is worth approximately 8500 pounds. For a sense of what these bequests could buy during the eighteenth century, see Old Bailey Online.

An Eighteenth-Century Case of Hair Voided by Urine

Posted on December 17, 2012 by - Collecting, Early Modern History, History of Medicine, Patients, Philosophical Transactions, Remedies, Royal Society

“Honourable Sir!” wrote Thomas Knight to Sloane in February 1737 (British Library, Sloane MS 4034, ff. 34-5). He wished Sloane’s advice on an “uncommon Case”—the discovery of hairs discharged by a man who suffered from a burning pain during urinating. Knight thoughtfully enclosed the matter in a pill box for Sloane’s examination.

The patient must have been in great pain as all the adjacent parts, internal and external, were swollen and irritated. He had tried bleeding, clysters, emulsions, and opiates, all to no avail; he was only relieved when he finally passed the “hairy Substance with the gritty Matter that adheres to it”. Importantly, the patient had “kept a strict Regimen” for many years because of gout and “incontinency of urine”. As part of his regimen, he regularly drank cow’s milk.

L. Beale, Kidney diseases, uinary deposits, 1869.
Credit: Wellcome Library, London.

Knight theorized that the fine hairs had come from the skin of some animal that had gotten into the patient’s body and then circulated through the body until reaching the renal glands. “It is more possible”, he thought, “that they were extraneous, than that they were generated in the Urinary Passages”. He recognised that the veins in the body were indeed very small, but damp hairs “become very flexible, pliable and susceptible of being contorted and of assuming any Figure”. Perhaps “some of the downy-hair about the [cow’s] Udder might got along with the Milk”.

The oddity of the story is itself intriguing, but so too is the afterlife of the letter and sample. The details noted on the back of the letter by Sloane (or on his behalf) suggest the process of cataloguing in his collections.

Apr 27 1738

Ent’d in L.B.

Knight of Hair voided by Urine.

 

Ph. Tr. No. 460

VIII IX A letter from Mr T Knight to Sir Hans Sloane

pr. R. S. &c concerning Hair voided by Urine.

The letter and/or the sample were kept and entered into one of the collections in 1738. The letter was also passed on to the Royal Society and it was published in Philosophical Transactions no. 460.

So, what did the Royal Society make of Knight’s report? The Phil. Trans. editor in 1739, Cromwell Mortimer, remarked after the letter: “I doubt of these Substances being real Hairs; I imagine they are rather grumous Concretions, formed only in the Kidneys by being squeezed out of the excretory Ducts into the Pelvis”.

Painful enough, in any case, but at least no need to fear drinking milk!

An Invitation to View a ‘Monster’

Posted on October 29, 2012 by - Collecting, Early Modern History, Hans Sloane, History of Medicine, History of Science, Philosophical Transactions, Religion

Amidst Sloane’s letters is a handwritten advertisement:

An admirable Curiosity of Nature being a Surprising Instance of a monstrous and preternatural birth lately in France to Children Joyned together in the Body. With Two Backs one Breast one Heart and Two Entrails one Head and Two faces Three Tongues in one mouth. The Bodies having their Proper Members so that Monster has Four arms and Four hands on which are sixteen Fingers and Four Thumbs Four Thighs Four legs and Feet and Toes proportionable with perfect nails on both Toes and Fingers. It being at full birth and lived the Space of Four Days. This wonderful curiosity may be brought to any gentleman’s House.

It is an intriguing note, lacking an author’s name or date. But it makes me wonder: did Sloane arrange to view this curiosity?

There are several accounts of unusual births—severely deformed children or animals—in Sloane’s correspondence, some of which appear in the Philosophical Transactions. Monstrous births were a source of great fascination to early modern people; besides being the subject of many treatises and pamphlets, such curiosities were regularly exhibited (for a fee) across Europe.

Nicolaus Tulpius, Conjoined twins (1652).
Credit: Wellcome Library, London. Wellcome Images

The term ‘monster’ comes from Latin, meaning portent or warning. And this was how many people understood them—as a message from God that indicated the mother’s sins or served to caution the wider community about its morals. Other people were simply curious and wanted entertainment, keen to pay the money to see something so unusual. Natural philosophers such as Sloane, however, wanted to understand why such births occurred. Perhaps they were part of the natural world after all, just a matter of excess, or one of God’s secrets placed in nature for man to uncover. But first, natural philosophers needed to distinguish the real from the fake. Given the possibilities of profit and fame, trickery was certainly possible.

Sloane did not indicate that he saw the curiosity. He was a busy man and probably would have relied on word of mouth to decide whether or not it was worth his while to view it. Nonetheless, it is interesting that he bothered to keep the invitation at all. It is arguable that this was simply a random scrap of paper that was caught up in his papers, but I think it is more likely that the invitation acted as a memory device, either to recall that a particular curiosity had come to London or that it was one he had seen. Most significant of all, however, is that he never printed an account by anyone in the Philosophical Transactions that matches the description of this curiosity.

Not all monsters, apparently, were interesting—either as a hoax or medical case!

Meeting Sloane

Posted on September 15, 2012 by - Collecting, Early Modern History, Hans Sloane, History of Medicine, History of Science

Sir Hans Sloane (1660-1753) was a great collector of his age. He collected curiosities, books, manuscripts, art, botanical samples, coins… He even collected knowledge, as secretary of the Royal Society and editor of the Philosophical Transactions (1695-1712), and kept his extensive correspondence from other people (forty-one volumes alone at the British Library). Despite his sizeable library and museum, Sloane himself remains elusive. He published relatively little and kept few drafts of his own letters. So, we often meet Sloane through the eyes of others.

Gottfried Kneller, Portrait of Hans Sloane (Source: Scientific Identity: Portraits from the Dibner Library of the History of Science and Technology, Smithsonian Libraries)

In August 1742, Henry Newman described his recent visit to Sloane’s new home in Chelsea (Wellcome Library, A letter by Henry Newman, 21 August 1742, WMS 7633/10; pictured above on blog banner). Sloane was 82 and had supposedly retired the year before because of poor health. Retirement for Sloane, however, was a busy affair. According to Newman, Sloane started his day by visiting the local Coffeeshop of Rarities via the garden passage that he’d had built. This ensured that Sloane did not “want company nor amusements”,  even though he had left London. From 5:00 to 6:00, Sloane saw patients and had his servant show visitors “his apartement of Curiosities”.

Newman was “indulg’d” in both activities. He first consulted Sloane about his asthma (caused, he reported, by living in London’s smoke), then was taken on a tour of the collections by Sloane’s servant. Newman noted the sheer size of the library–49,000 books and manuscripts. But what Newman admired most was the effectiveness of Sloane’s catalogues. Catalogues were crucial, both for finding items and for ensuring that everything remained in the same order as it had been in Bloomsbury. There were thousands of glasses with preserved animals also in precise order. The scale of Sloane’s move to Chelsea had been enormous, but “there was not one broke nor one book lost or mislaid”.

Among Sloane’s regular visitors was Princess Amelia. Newman reported that the Princess and her sisters had already visited Sloane three times, but as he “waited on Sr Hans they sent to know when they might come again”. All this description, Newman told his friend, was “to anticipate the pleasure you will have in viewing” the collections. Newman also hoped that Sloane’s “usefull life will be prolong’d many years by the change of his situation”.

Perhaps, as ever, the focus is really on Sloane’s collections. But there are tantalizing glimpses of the man himself. Even in retirement, he continued to practice medicine and to visit the coffeehouse for company. This suggests a sociable man who liked to keep busy and who continued to value his medical skills; others, like Newman, also thought highly Sloane’s experience, deeming him “usefull”. Sloane’s ability to keep his collections organised so that others could enjoy them was particularly impressive. Above all, though, Newman took much pleasure in his visit with Sloane–as did apparently the Princess, a repeat visitor: Sloane’s collections were only part of the attraction for his visitors.