By Lisa Smith

I am a historian of early modern science and medicine at the University of Saskatchewan and have been working on the correspondence of Sir Hans Sloane, an eighteenth-century physician, botanist and collector, since 1997. As a PhD student I used the letters, which are held at the British Library, to find patients’ experiences. But more recently I’ve been fascinated by the problems of finding Sloane’s own voice, as few of the letters in the collection were written by Sloane! This blog will highlight the stories of patients, scientists, collectors — and, of course, Sloane — that are found in the letters. Sometimes, guest bloggers will also contribute. The Sloane Letters Blog is part of a bigger digital project, Sir Hans Sloane’s Correspondence Online, that aims to make the letters more accessible to researchers. My project “Reconstructing the Lives of Doctor Sloane and His Patients in Eighteenth-Century England” is funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (2013-2016).

Questions? Please contact me at lisa.smith [at] usask.ca.