440 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES. 
Embarrassed by some troubles growing out of a political 
demonstration by the students at Heidelberg, Engelmann in 
the autumn of 1828 went to the university of Berlin for two 
years; and thence to Wurzburg, where he took his degree of 
Doctor in Medicine in the summer of 1831. His inaugural 
dissertation, “* De Antholysi Prodromus,” which he published 
at Frankfort in 1832, testifies to his early predilection for 
botany, and to his truly scientific turn of mind. It isa mor- 
phological dissertation, founded chiefly on the study of mon- 
strosities, illustrated by five plates filled with his own draw- 
ings. It was therefore quite in the line with the little treatise 
on the Metamorphosis of Plants, published forty years be- 
fore by another and the most distinguished native of Frank- 
fort, and it appeared so opportunely that it had the honor 
of Goethe’s notice and approval. Goethe’s correspondent, 
Madame von Willema, sent a copy to him only four weeks 
before his death. Goethe responded, making kind inquiries 
after young Engelmann, who, he said, had completely appre- 
hended his ideas of vegetable morphology, and had shown 
such genius in their development that he offered to place in 
this young botanist’s hands the store of unpublished notes and 
sketches which he had accumulated. 
The spring and summer of 1832 were passed at Paris in 
medical and scientific studies, with Braun and Agassiz as 
companions, leading, as he records, “a glorious life in scien- 
tific union, in spite of the cholera.’”” Meanwhile, Dr. Engel- 
mann’s uncles had resolved to make some land investments in 
the valley of the Mississippi, and he willingly became their 
agent. At least one of the family was already settled in IIli- 
nois, not far from St. Louis. Dr. Engelmann, sailing from 
Bremen for Baltimore in September, joined his relatives in 
the course of the winter, made many lonely and somewhat 
adventurous journeys on horseback in southern Illinois, Mis- 
souri, and Arkansas, which yielded no other fruits than 
those of botanical exploration; and finally he established 
himself in the practice of medicine at St. Louis, late in the 
autumn of 1835. St. Louis was then rather a frontier 
trading-post than a town, of barely eight or ten thousand 
