Saul Jarcho

Saul Wallenstein Jarcho, M.D. (October 25, 1906, New York City – September 10, 2000) was an American internist and historian of medicine. He is known for the eponymous Jarcho-Levin syndrome and, to a much lesser extent, Jarcho's syndrome.

Biography
Before entering college, Saul Jarcho studied German, French, and Latin, as well as ancient and modern Hebrew. In 1921, just before his 15th birthday, he matriculated at Harvard College, where he graduated in 1925. He then became a graduate student at Columbia University. There he graduated in 1926 with a master's degree in Latin and also studied advanced Anglo-Saxon and the history of Italian painting. He spent the summer of 1926 at the American Academy in Rome, where he studied ancient monuments and gained enthusiasm for learning Italian. From 1926 to 1930 he attended medical school at the Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons.

After receiving his medical degree, Jarcho spent the summer of 1930 at Puerto Rico's School of Tropical Medicine. Later in career he also spent the summers of 1938 and 1941 there. Beginning in autumn 1930 he spent four months as an assistant house surgeon at the New York Lying-In Hospital. From 1931 to 1933 he interned for 30 months as a house physician at Manhattan's Mount Sinai Hospital. For one year from 1933 to 1934 at Mount Sinai Hospital, he served as assistant in pathology under Dr. Paul Klemperer. A minor part of Jarcho's duty was to assist in preparation of specimens for the hospital's outstanding anatomical museum (which was eliminated in 1974). For two years from 1934 to 1936 he was an assistant and instructor in pathology at the pathology department of Johns Hopkins University. There he was supervised by William George MacCallum and Arnold Rice Rich. Returning to Manhattan in 1936, Jarcho entered medical practice and became a part-time instructor in pathology at the Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons and also a physician working at Mount Sinai Hospital. In 1940 he was elected a Fellow of the New York Academy of Medicine.

In 1940, Mount Sinai Hospital established a military unit and Jarcho began the study of Arabic. He became an advanced student in colloquial Egyptian Arabic, given in a course at Columbia University and supported but the Intensive Language Program of the American Council of Learned Societies. He began military service in October 1942 as a captain in the U.S. Army and was discharged in June 1946 with the rank of lieutenant colonel. Most of his service was in the Medical Ineglligence Division, of which he became commander in late 1945. About three years later, in October 1948, he married Irma Seijo (1918–2014), who was a research analyst from 1945 to 1948 in Latin American Medical Intelligence for the United States Army's Surgeon General's Office. She was a bacteriologist and science educator.

In 1946 Saul Jarcho returned to medical practice in the Medical Department of Mount Sinai Hospital and teaching at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine. For 2 years, beginning in 1949, he was in charge of cardiovascular research. He retired in 1980. He was the author of more than 200 articles in scholarly journals and more than 60 book reviews. From 1967 to 1977 he served as editor-in-chief of the Bulletin of the New York Academy of Medicine. For more than 20 years he was the USA's most prolific historian of cardiology. From 1958 to 1976 he contributed many historical articles to the American Journal of Cardiology. In 1968 and 1969 he was the president of the American Association for the History of Medicine. He was a leading expert on paleopathology. Jarcho was well aware that for most Americans untranslated works remain unread, so he made a lifelong effort to translate important medical literature ranging from classical antiquity to the recent past. Most of his papers are stored at the National Library of Medicine.

In 1963 he was awarded the William H. Welch Medal from the American Association for the History of Medicine. In 1995 the American Institute of the History of Pharmacy (AIHP) awarded him the George Urdang Medal.

Death notice published prematurely
In January 1998, Saul Jarcho's cousin Israel Saul (I. Saul) Jarcho died at age 90, and the New York Times published a paid death notice on Saturday, January 10, 1998. The alumni director at the Mount Sinai Alumni Associations mistakenly assumed that the death notice was for the 91-year-old Saul Jarcho and called in a death notice with biographical details about Saul Jarcho's career as an internist and medical historian. The New York Times published the erroneous death notice on Tuesday, January 13, 1998, and then a correction on Thursday, January 15, 1998.

Family
Saul Jarcho had a sister Grace Edith (Jarcho) Ross (1913–2010) and a brother Leonard W. Jarcho (1916–1996). The father of the three siblings was Julius Jarcho (1882–1963), a distinguished obstetrician and a generous donor to medical libraries in Israel. Leonard W. Jarcho, a physician and professor of neurology, had three sons, one of whom, John Adams Jarcho, became a physician. John A. Jarcho (1957–2022) was deputy editor for cardiology on the editorial staff of the New England Journal of Medicine. Saul Jarcho and his wife Irma had two sons: Thomas and Andrew. Julia Jarcho, a noted playwright, is the daughter of Thomas Jarcho.

Selected publications

 * (See John Mitchell, Benjamin Rush, and 1793 Philadelphia yellow fever epidemic.)
 * . (See Leopold Auenbrugger, René Laennec, and John Keats.)
 * (See Charles Locock.)
 * (See Francesco Contarini.)
 * (See Tolland Man.)
 * (See Steven Blankaart.)
 * (See Francesco Contarini.)
 * (See Tolland Man.)
 * (See Steven Blankaart.)
 * (See Francesco Contarini.)
 * (See Tolland Man.)
 * (See Steven Blankaart.)
 * (See Steven Blankaart.)
 * (See Steven Blankaart.)
 * (See Steven Blankaart.)

Books

 * ; book details at Harvard University Press
 * ; University of Bologna MS 2089-1
 * ; book details at Harvard University Press
 * ; University of Bologna MS 2089-1
 * ; book details at Harvard University Press
 * ; University of Bologna MS 2089-1
 * ; University of Bologna MS 2089-1
 * ; University of Bologna MS 2089-1