Year of birth: 1913

Year of death: 2002

Wikipedia

BIOGRAPHY

Odile Schweisguth was born in 1913 in the Vosges. She had started medical school in Nancy but, in 1942, she transferred to Paris and qualified in Medicine in 1946. Dr. Schweisguth started her career at the Hôpital des Enfants Malades.

in 1948 René Huguenin, the Director of the Institut Gustave Roussy, was looking for a pediatrician but no one was interested; the childhood malignant diseases were largely hopeless, and the ill children daunting. He turned to the prominent French pediatrician, Professor Robert Debré, who proposed Dr. Schweisguth for this unwelcome assignment. It was in this way that the first pediatric oncology service in France—indeed, in Europe—opened in April 1952. She gained experience, and already in 1959 mounted the first postgraduate course on the leukemias and solid tumors of childhood. In the same year, she spent 2 months at the “Jimmy Fund” Clinic, the childhood cancer center run by Professor Sidney Farber in Boston.

In 1970 she published in the Archives de Pédiatrie a clarion call article titled, “Must they be left to die?” In this article, she encouraged the medical world to look on the progress being made in the control of the childhood malignant diseases and mobilize for the battle. She also called attention to the need for family support. She also recognized the stress on the staff who looked after these very ill children, many of whom would die. She therefore initiated a psychologic/psychiatric service to provide support and help guard against undue stress and “burn out.” She encouraged lengthy visits to Villejuif by interested physicians from all corners of the country. In this way, she trained virtually all pediatric oncology pioneers in France. Dr. Zucker says, “I have never met a person like her, who could discuss on equal terms all aspects of diagnosis and therapy with the specialists in those disciplines.” This became manifest when as a sole author she wrote a book published in French and English entitled, “Solid Tumors of Childhood.”

She retired in 1978 at the age of 65 to her beloved country home in Cotâpre in Burgundy. She nonetheless continued to follow up more than 500 of her surviving patients who were her second family and many were in touch with her for the rest of her life. She died in 2002.