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 Wiirzburg, 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 is a 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 this young botanist's hands the store of unpublished notes and 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 Illi- 

 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 



