82 Trans. Acad. Sct. 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 oF 
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- 
