By the 18th century, however, 'cabinets of curiosities' gave way to different types of collections prized for their comprehensive ranges of plants, animals and various other types of artefacts. Europeans had come to recognise that nature itself offered enough diversity to delight the observer without recourse to the marvellous. Gone was the mythic and emblematic significance of specimens that was part of the classical world. What Enlightenment thought brought to Natural History - the collecting, describing and displaying of natural objects - was the idea of assemblages as parts of the orderly arrays of God's creation and of human artifice.

The impetus for this lay in the growth of the urban commercial societies of Holland and England where, during the Scientific Revolution, puritan reformers strove to improve the trades, agriculture and medicine. In the new mechanical philosophy, God was held to be a watchmaker, a craftsman. Objects were to be celebrated, estates were 'improved' and nature became 'domesticated' along with advances in agriculture and farming. The landed gentry collected plants and animals, eggs and minerals as well as archaeological artefacts, coins, prints and sculptures. Such assemblages denoted wealth, order and intellect and, in so far as they commanded respect, helped naturalise the social order.

It was this age of connoisseurship and stability that the founder of the British Museum, Hans Sloane was born into in 1660. As a child he was a keen observer of nature and in later years recalled how the study of plants and 'other parts of Nature much pleased him'. He studied medicine in France and at the age of thirty five set up practice in Bloomsbury Square, London. He became the epitome of a successful physician securing wealthy patients and royal patronage. As a naturalist, writer and collector Sloane was recognised by the Royal Society and eventually became its President from 1727-1741 - the only person to be President of both the Royal Society and the Royal College of Physicians at the same time (1719-1735).

Sloane's studies in botany - he met and befriended some of the greatest French botanists of the time, Joseph Pitton de Tournefort and Monsignor Magnol - were amply rewarded later in life. Upon qualifying in medicine, he was offered the opportunity to travel to Jamaica as physician to the new Governor. For fifteen months Sloane observed and documented the native flora and fauna, the local customs of the inhabitants and natural phenomena such as earthquakes. Upon the death of his employer, Sloane returned in 1689 and began work on his Catalogus Plantarum, which was eventually published in 1696.

Over the next fifty years Sloane's collections grew enormously to fill a large part of his house and attracted a stream of distinguished figures. One in particular, Carl Linnaeus, was to use Sloane's texts and drawings as the basis for descriptions of new species.

When Sir Hans Sloane died in 1753 he left in his will some 71,000 plants, animals, antiquities, coins and many other objects of the time to the nation, with the proviso that the sum of £20,000 be paid to his heirs. King George II and Parliament were persuaded to accept the gift, and an act of Parliament establishing the museum received royal assent on 7th June 1753, the money being raised through a public lottery.

Sloane, however, was not alone in assembling such collections. The famous surgeon John Hunter (1728-1793) amassed some 17,000 objects and specimens during his lifetime. These were bought by Parliament for £15,000 and eventually housed in the Royal College of Surgeons, where they are still on display. Another collector was Joseph Banks (1743-1820) who joined Captain Cook in the South Seas and brought back to London some 1,300 new plant species. He held the post of President of the Royal Society for 42 years and did much to establish the Botanic Garden at Kew.

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Content last updated: 25/07/2005

Dr. John Senior

Dr John Senior is a member of Linacre College, Oxford and tutors History of Science and Medicine. He is the former Director of the Bakken Library and Museum of Electricity in Life, Minneapolis.

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