Sprengel, KURT

Sprengel, KURT, physician and botanist, was born at Boldekow in Pomerania on 3d August 1766, and died at Halle on 15th March 1833. All his life was spent in quiet labour at Halle, from 1789 as professor of Medicine and from 1797 as professor of Botany. He won a reputation as a writer on the history of medicine and as a student of the anatomical structure and functions of plants. His principal books are Pragmatische Geschichte der Arzneikunde (5 vols. 1792–1803), Geschichte der Botanik (2 vols. 1817–18), and Neue Entdeckungen im ganzen Umfang der Pflanzenkunde (3 vols. 1819–22). Rosenbaum edited in 1844 Sprengel's Opuscula Academica, with a biography.