82 Trans. Acad. Sci. of St. Louis. 



come and stare at his doings, which they were half in- 

 clined to think had too near a resemblance to the black 

 art. The doctor's little phosphoric matches, igniting 

 spontaneously when the glass tube was broken, were 

 thought by some to be rather beyond mere human power. 

 His barometers and thermometers, with the scale neatly 

 painted with the pen, and the frames richly carved, were 

 objects of wonder. ' ' 



In his medical practice he depended largely upon herbs 

 which he grew in the garden surrounding his house or 

 gathered in the wild state. The first case of smallpox in 

 St. Louis appeared the year after Dr. Saugrain came. 

 He was an advocate of vaccination, calling attention to 

 its value as a preventive of smallpox and announcing his 

 readiness to vaccinate any one who should apply. He 

 was made post physician under the Spanish lieutenant 

 governor, Don Carlos Dehault Delassus, and, when this 

 section of the country became United States territory, 

 he was reappointed by President Jefferson. Until his 

 death, which occurred in 1820, Dr. Saugrain continued 

 his scientific experimental work and practiced his pro- 

 fession as a frontier physician. He was the first notable 

 representative of scientific investigation in St. Louis and 

 this part of the country. 



All the early explorers of the interior of North Amer- 

 ica dreamed of a passage to the South Sea and of a new 

 road to reach China and Japan with a view to entering 

 into commercial relations with these countries. From 

 the Indians they had learned of a great river flowing 

 into the ocean far away. The theory of a short-cut trans- 

 continental waterway was believed practicable by the 

 French throughout their occupancy of North America. 

 Jolliet and Marquette thought that the Mississippi might 

 flow into the Pacific ocean, but on ascertaining that this 

 was not the case, they looked upon the Missouri river 

 as the one flowing into the Ocean of the West. Several 

 French expeditions were organized to explore the Mis- 

 souri and some of its lower tributaries, but they ac- 



