The British
Museum.

Hans Sloane—an English physician and naturalist—was born in 1660 in Northern Ireland and was a man who was quite successful and wealthy by the standards of his time. At the age of 23, Hans earned his medical degree in France, became a member of the Royal Society, and studied under the renowned physician Thomas Sydenham. At the age of 27, the physician traveled to Jamaica, described plant species unseen in Europe, and introduced the world to a new delicacy. He devised a way to improve the taste of a drink made by Jamaican natives who mixed cocoa bean powder with water. This is how England discovered the recipe for chocolate milk. Hans returned to London with a large collection of curiosities and an irresistible desire to collect antiques. The ambition to open an antique shop required a great deal of money. This gave Hans a powerful motivation to become a first-class specialist. Sloan’s medical practice among high society brought him distinguished patients: Queen Anne, Kings George I and George II, a hereditary noble title, and the prestigious position of head of the Royal College of Physicians. Sloane did indeed manage to realize his dream—at Montagu House, he assembled a colossal collection of seventy thousand authentic treasures: coins, medals, books, sculptures, and decorative objects. After Sloane’s death in 1753, as stipulated in his will, Parliament paid his executor 20,000 pounds sterling, and the collection became public. And in 1759, Hans Sloane’s collection was opened to the public free of charge, and it was expanded to include the collections of Earl Robert Harley and the library of antiquarian Robert Cotton. Now, 250 years later, we know it as the British Museum in Bloomsbury.