Sealed and concealed: the uses of Hans Sloane’s collection of ‘Vegetable Substances’

Abstract

Between the late seventeenth and mid-eighteenth centuries, the physician Hans Sloane (1660–1753) formed a botanical collection, which he termed the ‘Vegetable Substances’. It comprised over 12,500 specimens and corresponding catalogue descriptions. These bits of plants were sealed into small glass boxes so that viewers could examine them closely without damaging them. While Sloane never described the use of this collection, it formed part of his method of understanding and ordering the world around him. This method included writing descriptions of plant specimens that acknowledged their context: the people who collected them, where they came from and their local uses. This paper also suggests a more fluid concept of use by examining the uses of the plants in the collection in terms of medicine and gardening.