KAEMPFER, Engelbrecht (1651-1716), traveller and physician, was born September 16, 1651, at Lemgo in Lippe-Detmold, Westphalia, where his father was a pastor. He studied at Hameln, Lüneburg, Hamburg, and Lübeck, and, after graduating as doctor of philosophy at Cracow, he spent four years at Königsberg in Prussia, in the study of medicine and the natural sciences. In 1681 he visited Upsala in Sweden, where he was offered inducements to settle; but his desire for foreign travel led him eagerly to accept the post of secretary to the embassy which Charles XI. sent through Russia to Persia in 1683. When after a stay of two years the Swedish embassy prepared to return from Ispahan, Kaempfer entered the service of the Dutch East India Company, as chief surgeon of the fleet then in the Persian Gulf. A malignant fever which seized him at Gamron on the Gulf prevented his further travels for a long while; and he did not arrive at Batavia till September 1689. The following winter was spent by Kaempfer in studying the natural history of Java; and in May 1690 he set out for Japan as physician to the embassy sent yearly to that country by the Dutch. The ship in which he sailed touched at Siam, and in September arrived at Nagasaki, the only Japanese port then open to foreigners. Kaempfer stayed two years in Japan, during which he twice visited Yedo (now Tokio), the capital of the shogun. His adroitness, insinuating manners, and medical skill overcame the habitual jealousy and reticence of the natives, and enabled him to elicit much valuable information, which he has embodied in his History of Japan. In November 1692 Kaempfer left Japan, and in October 1693 he landed at Amsterdam. Receiving the degree of doctor of medicine at Leyden, he settled down in his native city to edit and ...publish his travels and scientific papers at his leisure; but his appointment as physician to the count of Lippe involved him in the cares of an extensive medical practice that hindered his literary labours. His health, already impaired by his travels, gave way under various domestic troubles; and he died at Lemgo, November 2, 1716, in his sixtysixth year.
The only work Kaempfer lived to publish was Amoenitatum Exoticarum Politi∙co-ρhysico-medicarum Fasciculi V. (Lemgo, 1712), a selection from his papers giving most interesting results of his observations in Georgia, Persia, and Japan. At his death his unpublished manuscripts were purchased by Sir Hans Sloane) and conveyed to England. Among them was a History of Japan, which was translated from the manuscript into English by J. G. Scheuchzer and published at London, in 2 vols., in 1728. The original German lias never been published, the extant German version being taken from the English. The interest and value of the work are very great. It not only contains a history, strictly so called, but also a description of the political, social, and physical state of the country in the 17th century. For upwards of a.hundred years it remained the chief, if not almost the only available source of information about Japan for the general reader, and is still not wholly obsolete. A life of the author is prefixed to the History.
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