A brief history of pediatric oncology

Abstract

Dr Odile Schweisguth was born during the turbulent period of the first world war in Vosges (France) in 1913. Her first contact with medicine was at the Red Cross Nursing School and with the mentoring and support of one of her teachers there, was admitted to the medical school in Nancy in 1932, graduating in Paris in 1936. Her early training was carried out in “Hopital des Enfants Malades” in Paris. She became the first pediatric oncologist when she was appointed to the Consultant post in 1948 at the Institute Gustave Roussy to establish a new paediatric section at this renowned Cancer centre in France. She set up over her working life until she retired in 1978, a separate paediatric oncology ward fully staffed caring for children with cancer and to look after the dying children. The volume of patients increased to 350 per year once it was fully established. Her visit in 1959 for 2 months to the Sidney Farber at the Boston Children’s Hospital established a lifelong friendship and a strong voice for children’s cancer. Her interest was on long term morbidity because the main treatment modality available at that time was radiation and radiotherapists had no means of scaling down the treatment for children. She was a strong advocate for the rights of childhood cancer survivors. An initial meeting on childhood cancers in 1959 was organised and Odile Schweisguth was its director. This led to comprehensive pediatric oncology care worldwide with the formation of the new society called Societe International d’Oncologie Pediatrique, at a meeting in Madrid in 1969. She was elected as the first Present of SIOP, with a membership worldwide of over a thousand members. Odile died at the age of 89 in March 2002.