Letters to Charles E. de M. Sajous

Charles Eucharist de Médicis Sajous (1852-1929) was born December 13, 1852 to Count Charles Roustan de Médicis-Jodoigne and Marie Pierrett Curt. Sajous’ father was the head of the Franco-Flemish branch of the Médici family of Florence, Italy. His father died when he was two and Charles succeeded him as Comte (Count) de Médicis-Jodoigne. His mother later married James Sajous and Charles took the name of his step-father.

Sajous came to the United States at age nine after four years of schooling in Paris. He received further education from private tutors before attending the University of California and Jefferson Medical College in Philadelphia. He was graduated with a medical degree from Jefferson in 1878 and later, in recognition of numerous achievements in the medical profession, Sajous received the equivalent of bachelor in arts and sciences from the University of France. As a physician, teacher, author, and editor, Charles Sajous became a prominent name in the late nineteenth-century medical profession. After two years as resident physician of Howard Hospital in Philadelphia, Sajous held numerous teaching appointments. In 1881, Dr. Sajous was appointed professor of anatomy and physiology at the Wagner Institute of Science, lecturer in the Philadelphia School of Anatomy, and clinical assistant in the laryngology department of Jefferson Medical College. After a six year leave to Paris where he researched and wrote on the physiology and therapeutics of ductless glands, Sajous returned to Philadelphia in 1897 and became dean of the Medico-Chirurgical College. Upon the reorganization of Temple University in 1909, he accepted the Chair of Pharmacology and Therapeutics. He worked hard to transform Temple University Medical School into a Class A Medical program and helped raise funds to outfit the Medical College with excellent facilities and faculty.

Sajous published and edited numerous books and articles. In 1885 he published Hayfever and Its Successful Treatment by Superficial Organic Alteration of the Nasal Mucous Membrane, and in the same year, Lectures on the Diseases of the Nose and Throat. From 1888 to 1896 he edited the Annual of the Universal Medical Sciences, published by the F.A. Davis Company of Philadelphia, and during the nine years of its existence not only edited but contributed countless articles to the forty-five volumes of this work. In 1898, Sajous assumed the editorship of a similar project published by the same firm, at first called the Annual and Analytical Cyclopedia of Practical Medicine and later, Sajous's Analytic Cyclopedia of Practical Medicine. Ten editions (six to eight volumes each) of this work were issued before his death. Dr. Sajous was also the author of The Internal Secretions and The Principles of Medicine (two volumes, 1903-07), in which he reviewed all the available literature on endocrinology and set forth his own views on the subject which were controversial at the time. From 1911 to 1919, Sajous was managing editor of the New York Medical Journal. He was the first president of the Association for the Study of the Internal Secretions; a member of the American College of Physicians, the American Therapeutic Society, and the American Philosophical Society; and a fellow of the College of Physicians of Philadelphia. In 1926 he published The Strength of Religion as Shown by Science.

On January 30, 1884, Sajous was married to Emma Christine Bergner of Philadelphia. Their only child, Louis Theodore de Médicis Sajous, was graduated from the University of Pennsylvania Medical School in 1909 and worked closely with his father on his studies of endocrinology. Both Charles and his son Louis died in 1929.

Dictionary of American Biography. New York: C. Scribner's Sons, 11 v., 1958-1964. National Cyclopedia of American Biography. New York: J. T. White, 1974. Information derived from the collection.