1891-1957

Swiss Physician and Medical Historian

Henry Sigerist was a medical man who focused on illuminating the history and development of medicine and its effect on patients, practitioners, and society. He was the first medical historian to emphasize the impact of culture and conditions on medicine and the importance of medicine in modern society. He was one of the first respected medical scholars to take up the field of the history of science, a brand-new discipline in the early twentieth century.

Born in Switzerland in 1891, Henry E. Sigerist graduated from local schools unsure of his intended profession. In 1910 at the University of Zurich, he took courses in medicine, history, and art and eventually decided to combine them. He learned about oriental philology, the study of historic and comparative language, and transferred to University College London for a year. He spent 1914 at the University of...