SPRENGEL, Kurt (1766-1833), German botanist and physician, was born on 3d August 1766 at Boldekow in Pomerania. His father, a clergyman, provided him with a thorough education of wide scope; and the boy at an early age distinguished himself as a linguist, not only in Latin and Greek, but also in Arabic. He appeared as an author at the age of fourteen, publishing a small work called Anleitung zur Botanik für Frauenzimmer in 1780. In 1784 he commenced in the university of Halle to study theology and medicine, but soon relinquished the former. He graduated in medicine in 1787. In 1789 he was appointed an extraordinary professor of medicine in his alma mater, and in 1795 was promoted to an ordinary professorship. He devoted much of his time to medical work and to investigations into the history of medicine; and he published several very valuable works in this department of knowledge, and made himself well known as one of the ablest medical men in Germany. He held a foremost rank in medicine and in botany as an original investigator, and in both published works of great value, besides numerous articles in scientific journals and in the proceedings of learned societies. His accomplishments as a linguist probably, in part at least, determined him in the choice of the department to which he most fully devoted himself, and in which he stood facile princeps. Among the more important of his many services to the science of botany was the part he took in awakening and stimulating microscopic investigation into the anatomy of the tissues of the higher plants, though defective microscopic appliances rendered the conclusions arrived at by himself unreliable. He also made many improvements in the details of both the Linnaean and the “natural” systems of classification. His life ...