Letter 2563

Brydges invites Sloane to view ‘samples of herbs and root’, one of which has useful virtues and is ‘one of the ingredients in Palm oil’. Some of the plants and herbs became ‘mouldy and rotten’ during the voyage ‘from Wydak’. Brydges asks that Sloane direct him to where ‘Snakeroot plant’ and ‘Dragons blood’ might be found. He sends ‘a little pot of the balsam, wch they call Bonebos Fair’. James Brydges, 1st Duke of Chandos (1674-1744) was a politician, patron of the arts, and, like Sloane, on the Board of Governors of the Foundling Hospital. (Joan Johnson, Brydges, James, first duke of Chandos (16741744), Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn, Sept 2010 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/3806, accessed 30 Aug 2011]).