Tag: British Library

On Hans Sloane’s Copies of De Humani Corporis Fabrica

Title page. Vesalius, De humani corporis fabrica libri septum, 1555. Credit: Wellcome Library, London.

Title page. Vesalius, De humani corporis fabrica libri septum, 1555. Credit: Wellcome Library, London.

Thanks to Felicity Roberts, I’ve learned that a copy of Vesalius’ De Humani Corporis Fabrica Librorum Epitome (Basel, 1543) once owned by Hans Sloane went up for auction at Christie’s on 15 July.  Although the list price was a £70,000-£100,000, the book ended up going for £60,000.

Christie’s has just started a Discovery series of short videos to highlight pieces with particularly interesting histories. First up: Sloane’s book! Go take a look at “The ‘Google Maps’ of the Human Body” now.

What I love about this video and post is how well it captures Sven Becker’s enthusiasm when it came to finding something unexpected in the course of researching the book’s provenance. The sale also caused some excitement on the C-18L listserv, with some contributors wondering whether the book had been stolen or its notes forged.

Alison Walker, who leads the British Library’s Sloane Printed Books Project, attended the auction and has been tracing the book’s provenance in more detail. This has required a bit of digging, but the process involved in uncovering a book’s history is fascinating. It’s worth quoting Alison’s findings (which she shared in an email to me) at length. She reports that the book, which was from the Duke of Westminster’s collection,

seems to have been sold as a duplicate by the British Museum in 1769, and appears as lot 336 on p. 12 of S. Baker and G. Leigh, A Catalogue of the Duplicates of the British Museum which will be sold by auction… April 4 1769 and nine following days, London, 1769. Normally one would expect to see a British Museum duplicate sale stamp on the book, but it seems to have been omitted in this case. It is listed on p. 54v of the interleaved copy of J.A. van der Linden, Lindenius renovatus, 1686, which Sloane used as his catalogue of Latin medical books. The book may have been acquired by Sloane in the 1720s or 1730s, though there is no precise acquisition date in his catalogue, and no indication of its previous provenance.

Vesalius, De humani corporis fabrica, 1543. Credit: Wellcome Library, London.

Vesalius, De humani corporis fabrica, 1543.
Credit: Wellcome Library, London.

She has now included the book in the Sloane Printed Books database–a useful tool for suggesting the comings and goings of books in Sloane’s library over the years. (And, believe me, it is easy to lose track of time when playing with the database.)

The British Library still holds several other versions of De Humani Corporis Fabrica once owned by Sloane, including an especially fancy Epitome printed on vellum. And along the way, the British Library has sold off other copies from Sloane’s collection. For example, one 1555 edition of the book now at the Royal Society library was purchased during a duplicate sale in 1830.

Although there was a bit of excited speculation about fraud or theft surrounding this sale, a bit of historical detective work can uncover a much more prosaic explanation. Records do sometimes get lost–or never created, as in this case.

The featured image: putti killing a dog, from book 7 of De Humani Corporis Fabrica (Basel, 1555). Credit: Wellcome Library, London. I’ve always hated putti.

How to Build a Universal Collection, or Nicknackatory

By James Hawkes

Sloane and me at the British Museum.

Sloane and I at the British Museum.

The sheer immensity of Sloane’s collection poses a daunting challenge for the researcher, especially given its present division among different institutions. It might be useful to consider Sloane’s collection alongside smaller and more manageable (not to mention intact!) ones.

I recently had the opportunity to travel to the United Kingdom as part of a senior-undergraduate course offered by the University of Saskatchewan. Coins in Early Modern Collections of Curiosities was a hands-on study of coins in two early modern cabinets of curiosities: John Bargrave’s seventeenth-century collection (Canterbury Cathedral) and William Constable late 18th century cabinet of curiosities  (Burton Constable).

Although Sloane’s numismatic collection has physically endured better than, say, his beloved butterflies, we don’t have many details about this part of the collection. The catalogues describing Sloane’s coins disappeared during the Second World War.  But by studying other complete (if comparatively small) early modern collections of coins, gives insight into Sloane’s goals and influences.

Cabinets of Curiosities were intended to represent the whole of Creation in microcosm, something far easier to discern with intact collections. In our age of narrow specialisation, Sloane’s collection has been divvied up so thoroughly between the British Library, the British Museumn, and the Natural History Museum, that the universalising ambition of Sloane can be hard to see. Smaller cabinets also provide an appreciation for how the sheer size of Sloane’s collection made it so exceptional.

No collector could bear to look at himself in the mirror without at least one unicorn horn in his collection (from Burton Constable)

No collector could bear to look at himself in the mirror without at least one unicorn horn in his collection (from Burton Constable)

So, how do you go about building a universal collection?

The world is filled with strange and wondrous objects and if you are as serious about building a microcosm of it as Sloane was, then you’ll need to get your hands on some pretty weird artefacts. These can range from simple oddities like a “rope snapped by a strong man,” to an alicorn or even a horn from a woman’s head. 

Not all of Sloane’s contemporaries were enthusiastic about his penchant for collecting almost anything that fell into his hands. As Horace Walpole, one of the trustees Sloane appointed to posthumously oversee his collection said:

You will scarce guess how I employ my time; chiefly at present in the guardianship of embryos and cockleshells. Sir hans [sic] Sloane is dead, and has made me one of the trustees to his museum. . . . He valued it at fourscore thousand; and so would any body who loves hippopotamuses, sharks with one ear, and spiders as big as geese!

Sir Charles Hanbury Williams also expressed similar sentiments about the value of Sloane’s collecting in an ironic ode on the subject. In this poem he claimed that he was acquiring for Sloane’s “nicknackatory”  such fantastic curiosities as Dido’s sword, Eve’s snakeskin, Adam’s fig-leaf, Noah’s stuffed pigeon, a sultry glance from Cleopatra and a few “strains of Cicero’s eloquence.” He even suggested that Sloane’s inability to distinguish fact from fiction extended  to his medical practice… Sloane has acquired such invaluable medicine as: [1]

The stone whereby Goliath died, Which cures the head-ache, well apply’d.

It is certainly worth noting that Sloane’s medicine chest contained some items that we would now think of as pretty odd, such as holding bezoars (a mass from a goat’s intestines) as sovereign against poison.

Many major English museums originated–like the British Museum–in personal cabinets of curiosities, but these were so integrated with other collections that the institutions are uncertain about the provenance of a number of the artefacts in their care. For historians, this tendency to merge collections rather than to preserve them in pristine isolation (as the British Library treats stamp collections) may seem unfortunate.

However, this disregard of previous collectors and focus on the artefacts themselves was also the general practice of Sloane and his contemporaries. For instance, Elias Ashmole’s collection (which became the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford) was largely grounded in the Ark of the Tradescants. Sloane himself was (in)famous for how much of his incomparable collection was built on the wholesale acquisition of the collections of others.

Just as Sloane was attempting to present the world in microcosm, the Enlightenment Gallery at the British Museum can be seen as an attempt to represent Sloane’s collection in microcosm. Our class visit to the gallery was an opportunity to see items from Sloane’s collection, with its strange juxtaposition of naturalia and classicism. This gives a small taste of the experience that Sloane’s contemporaries might have had when visiting his in Chelsea so many centuries ago. It is a powerful moment to actually see the physical objects of centuries ago, rather than merely to read about them or look at pictures. The heady experience of actually seeing the objects is of course why–both in Sloane’s time and today–museums are so popular. Cliche but true, they make history come to life!

A Microcosm of a Microcosm, from the Enlightenment Gallery of the British Museum

A Microcosm of a Microcosm, from the Enlightenment Gallery of the British Museum

[1] Barbara M. Benedict, “Collecting Trouble: Sir Hans Sloane’s Literary Reputation in Eighteenth-Century Britain,” Eighteenth Century Life, 36, 2 (2012), 120, 126-128.

Sloane 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, collected medical recipes like many other eighteenth-century families. As Alun Withey points out, medical knowledge was of part of social currency. Three Sloane-related recipe books that I’ve located so far provide insight into some of the family’s domestic medical practices and interests.

Elizabeth Fuller: Collection of cookery and medical receipts
Credit: Wellcome Collection, London.

Two books are held at the British Library, donated in 1875 by the Earl of Cadogan. A book of household recipes, primarily for cookery, was owned by Elizabeth Sloane—Sloane’s daughter who married into the Cadogan family in 1717 (BL Add. MS 29739). The second book, c. 1750, contained medical, household and veterinary recipes (BL Add. MS 29740), including several attributed to Sir Hans Sloane. A third book, which belonged to Elizabeth Fuller, is held at the Wellcome Library (MS 2450) and is dated 1712 and 1820. Given the initial date and name, it is likely that the book’s first owner was Sloane’s step-daughter from Jamaica, Elizabeth Rose, who married John Fuller in 1703. Sloane’s nephew, William, married into the Fuller family as well in 1733.

Elizabeth Sloane, of course, compiled her collection long before her marriage; born in 1695, she was sixteen when she signed and dated the book on October 15, 1711. This was a common practice for young women who were learning useful housewifery skills. The handwriting in the book is particularly good, with lots of blank space left for new recipes, suggesting that this was a good copy book rather than one for testing recipes. There are, even so, some indications of use: a black ‘x’ beside recipes such as “to candy cowslips or flowers or greens” (f. 59), “for burnt almonds” (f. 57v) or “ice cream” (f. 56). The ‘x’ was a positive sign, as compilers tended to cross out recipes deemed useless.

The Cadogan family’s book of medicinal remedies appears to have been intended as a good copy, but became a working copy. In particular, the recipes to Sloane are written in the clearest hand in the text and appear to have been written first. Although there are several blank folios, there are also multiple hands, suggesting long term use. There are no textual indications of use, but several recipes on paper have been inserted into the text: useful enough to try, but not proven sufficiently to write in the book. As Elaine Leong argues, recipes were often circulated on bits of paper and stuck into recipe books for later, but entering a recipe into the family book solidified its importance—and that of the recipe donor—to the family.

Sloane’s recipes are the focal point of the Cadogan medical collection. Many of his remedies are homely, intended for a family’s everyday problems: shortness of breath, itch, jaundice, chin-cough, loose bowels, measles and worms. There are, however, two that spoke to his well-known expertise: a decoction of the [peruvian] bark (f. 8v)—something he often prescribed–and “directions for ye management of patients in the small-pox” (f. 10v).

Elizabeth Fuller compiled her book of medicinal and cookery recipes several years after her marriage and the book continued to be used by the family well into the nineteenth century. The book is written mostly in one hand, but there are several later additions, comments and changes in other hands. The recipes are  idiosyncractic and reflect the family’s particular interests: occasionally surprising ailments (such as leprosy) and a disproportionate number of remedies for stomach problems (flux, biliousness, and bowels). The family’s Jamaican connections also emerge with, for example, a West Indies remedy for gripes in horses (f. 23). There are no remedies included from Sloane, but several from other physicians.

This group of recipe books connected to the Sloane Family all show indications of use and, in particular, the Cadogan medical recipe collection and the Fuller book suggest that they were used by the family over a long period of time. Not surprisingly, the Fuller family drew some of their knowledge from their social and intellectual networks abroad.

But it is the presence or absence of Sloane’s remedies in the books that is most intriguing. Did this reflect a distant relationship between Sloane and his step-daughter? Hard to say, but it’s worth noting that his other step-daughter, Anne Isted, consulted him for medical problems and the Fuller family wrote to him about curiosities.

Or, perhaps, it highlights the emotional significance of collecting recipes discussed by Montserrat Cabré. Sloane was ninety-years old when the Cadogan family compiled their medical collection.

Hans Sloane Memorial Inscription, Chelsea, London. Credit: Alethe, Wikimedia Commons, 2009.

It must have been a bittersweet moment as Elizabeth Cadogan (presumably) selected what recipes would help her family to remember her father after he died: not just his most treasured and useful remedies, but ones that evoked memories of family illnesses and recoveries.

Recipes in Sir Hans Sloane’s Collections

Happy New Year!

This week, I have a couple recipes-related posts planned in response to Arnold Hunt’s fascinating interview at The Recipes Project on recipe books from Sloane’s collection. Hunt, a Curator of Manuscripts at the British Library (and friend of this blog), has much to say on the process of collecting and curating, as well as recipe books.

You should read it.