306 PROCEEDINGS OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMY 



England in early life, was a well known and successful Boston mer- 

 chant. His brother, Kirk Boott, Jr., was one of the pioneers of the 

 manufacturing enterprise at Lowell. Francis Boott, the third son, 

 was born in Boston on the 26th of September, 1792 ; was graduated 

 at Harvard College in 1810 ; passed the four succeeding years in 

 England; and, returning to this country in the year 1814, with his 

 scientific tastes awakened, he was mainly occupied for the next' six 

 years in investigating the botany of New England. In the summer 

 of 1816, he, in connection with Dr. Bigelow, undertook the botanical 

 exploration of the higher mountains of New England, and in one tour 

 ascended Wachusett, Monadnock, Ascutney, and Mount Washington, 

 the latter at that time to be reached only by a laborious journey of 

 two days on foot. They were' accompanied upon this at that time 

 formidable expedition by our late associates. Chief Justice Shaw and 

 Francis C. Gray. An interesting account of the ascent of Mount 

 Washington was published at. the time in the New England Journal 

 of Medicine and Surgery, by Dr. Bigelow, now the sole survivor of 

 the party. 



In the year 1820, at the age of twenty-eight, having determined to 

 adopt the medical profession, Mr. Boott crossed the Atlantic for the 

 last time, and, proceeding to London, became a pupil of the late Dr. 

 Armstrong. He continued his medical studies in the University of 

 Edinburgh, where he took the degree of M. D. in 1824. He then went 

 to Paris for a year, studying in the schools of medicine and of natural 

 history, and forming the acquaintance of the eminent French naturahsts 

 of that period. He soon after established himself in London as a phy- 

 sician, and also as Lecturer on Botany and Materia Medica in the 

 Webb Street School of Medicine, in connection with his preceptor and 

 near friend, Dr. Armstrong. Upon the early death of Dr. Armstrong, 

 he became his biographer and expositor, and published in 1834, after 

 several years' preparation, in two octavo volumes, his " Memoir of the 

 Life and Medical Opinions of John Armstrong, M.D., to which is 

 added an Inquiry into the Facts connected with those Forms of Fever 

 attributed to Malaria and Marsh Effluvium," — a work which excited 

 .considerable attention. He had before published two Introductory 

 Lectures on Materia Medica. He was an active promoter of the 

 establishment of the London University (now University College), 

 and was for more than a quarter of a century an influential member of 

 its Senate and Council. He had been elected a Fellow of the Linnasan 



1 



