Sir Hans Sloane's greatest contribution

The Great Court at the British Museum. The quotation you can't see here: "and let thy feet, millenniums hence, be set in midst of knowledge" from the poem The Two Voices by Alfred, Lord Tennyson.

I promised to relate a bit of interesting trivia passed on by our tour guide Sean. Since it pertains to the British Museum, I saved it for the day we were scheduled to visit the museum. Ryan and I had previously posted about what we enjoyed about the exhibits, so this will look more at how the museum came into being.

Sir Hans Sloane was a physician in the late 1600s and early 1700s. He was a proponent of smallpox vaccination and counted among his patients Queen Anne and Kings George I and II .

He also was a collector of rare objects, accumulating more than 70,000 objects by the time he died at age 92 in 1743. That included 23,000 coins and medals, 50,000 books, prints and manuscripts, and 1,125 'things relating to the customs of ancient times' according to the British Museum. His house was popular among visitors because of all of these curiosities.

In his will, Sloane "sold" his entire collection to the nation for £20,000, to be paid to his heirs. Parliament accepted his offer and that collection became the British Museum.

However, that might not have been Sloane's greatest contribution. He also introduced Britain to milk chocolate. While working as a physician in Jamaica, Sloane tasted a local "chocolately" drink that he found a little too strong for his tastes. He sweetened it by adding milk and brought the recipe back with him, selling it as medicine. Later that recipe was used by the Cadbury brothers for their chocolate milk mix.

Statue of Queen Anne in front of St. Paul's Cathedral. It is apparently a very flattering rendition. She was extremely short (about 4-foot-8) and extremely rotund, and she had many health problems. One of her favorite medicines was a sweetened chocolate drink recommended by her physician, Hans Sloane.

"No, he wasn't punished, it just broke off"

Statues that make up part of the Elgin Marbles. Only Dionysus has managed to maintain his head through the years.

Although the British Museum is a self-guided tour through the evolution of civilization, the hordes of people visiting on Wednesday meant we were never wanting for commentary.

I ended up behind a father and son of about 7 or 8ish when entering the Elgin Marbles exhibit of plaster castings of the stone-carved mural that surrounded the Parthenon. It's a series of depictions of men preparing to go to battle, some on horseback and most didn't seem to bother with getting dressed that day. When looking at the first one, the boy must have asked about why one of the men didn't have -- how shall I say this? -- all of his manly equipment anymore. I wasn't paying attention to the kid's question but I had to stifle a laugh at the dad's answer: "No, he wasn't punished, it just broke off."


Ryan looking at friezes that are part of the Elgin Marbles collection​.

Amid the crush of other visitors, we saw the Rosetta stone, the Egyptian tombs and statues, and the remaining pieces of the Parthenon. Most of the statues of Greek gods from the Parthenon are headless, so the curators have had to hedge on which god or goddess it is. For that, we can all thank the genius who in 1687 decided to store gunpowder in the Parthenon while Athens was under siege by the Venetians. Seriously, how was that ever a good idea?

Elizabeth unintentio​nally being Egyptian. Ryan kept telling her to move back, and she did thinking she was in someone's way. Then he snapped the shot.

Upstairs, we met Ginger, the poor dead Egyptian who was buried in a shallow grave of sand around 3400 BC and was baked for 5,000 years. Now, he lies naked in the fetal position to be gawked at by millions of people each year. If Karma exists, you'd think that was a better fate for someone who ordered explosives to be stored at one of the world's most historic places.

Click here for more photos from the British Museum.