Medicine -- Anecdotes; Physicians -- Great Britain
[6] The learned Librarian of the College of Physicians in a letter to
me, elicited by the first edition of "The Book About Doctors,"
observes on this point: "Sir Hans Sloane is commonly stated to have
been the first medical baronet, but I think incorrectly. Sir Edmund
Greaves, M. D., a Fellow of the College, who died 11th Nov., 1680, is
said, and I am disposed to think with truth, to have been created a
Baronet at Oxford in 1645. Anthony A. Wood it is true calls him a
'pretended baronet,' but he was acknowledged to be a true and
veritable one by his colleagues of our college, and considering the
jealousy of physicians, which is not quite so great by the way as you
seem to think, this is no small testimony in favour of my belief. In
the 5th edition of Guillim's Heraldry he is made to be the 450th
baronet from the first institution of the order, and is placed between
William de Borcel of Amsterdam and George Carteret of Jersey. If you
think the matter worthy of investigation you may turn to Nash's
Worcestershire, vol. i., p. 198."
In 1742, Sir Hans Sloane quitted his professional residence at
Bloomsbury; and in the society of his library, museum, and a select
number of scientific friends, spent the last years of his life at
Chelsea, the manor of which parish he had purchased in 1722.
In the _Gentleman's Magazine_ for 1748, there is a long but
interesting account of a visit paid by the Prince and Princess of
Wales to the Baronet's museum. Sir Hans received his royal guests and
entertained them with a banquet of curiosities, the tables being
cleverly shifted, so that a succession of "courses," under glass
cases, gave the charm of variety to the labours of observation.
In his old age Sir Hans became sadly penurious, grudging even the
ordinary expenses of hospitality. His intimate friend, George Edwards,
F.R.S., gives, in his "Gleanings of Natural History," some particulars
of the old Baronet, which present a stronger picture of his parsimony
than can be found in the pages of his avowed detractors.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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