Odile Schweisguth was born in 1913 in the Vosges. She was the last of five children. Her siblings between them had 29 children, but Odile Schweisguth never married. They were a very close family and would meet at least once a year with over 100 attending. The extended family included many prominent political and military figures.

Her father had been part of the occupying forces in Germany between 1919 and 1924. Thus, much of her early schooling was in Germany at the Lycée Français. She had started medical school in Nancy but, when her father retired in 1942, she transferred to Paris and qualified in Medicine in 1946. Dr. Schweisguth had decided on pediatrics from the outset and started her career at the Hôpital des Enfants Malades.
René Huguenin in 1948 was the Director of the Insitut Gustave- Roussy (IGR), the major cancer center located in Villejuif, Paris.He was looking for a pediatrician who would look after the children with cancer at the IGR. It was a difficult post to fill. 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 several weeks in the United States, which included 2 months at the “Jimmy Fund” Clinic, the childhood cancer center run by Professor Sidney Farber. There she absorbed the pervading optimism that childhood cancer was curable.

More than that, she observed the encompassing compassion for the children and their families. This aspect of pediatric oncology care was termed as “Total Care” by Dr. Farber. After years of additional experience, she, in 1970, 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. Dr. Schweisguth also called attention to the need for family support, as the drama unfolded in each household. She was also aware of the psychologic dimensions of the specialty. She 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.” This was the first service of its kind. She encouraged lengthy visits to Villejuif by interested physicians from all corners of the country. In thisway, she trained virtually all pediatric oncology pioneers in France. She looked on herself as an oncology generalist as she for years had been a pediatric generalist. 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 was very cognizant of the delayed iatrogenic complications of therapy, and kept voluminous files on her patients who survived. Those records contained more than the medical highlights of the post treatment years. They also listed personal milestones: graduations, marriages, children born, and the like. She maintained an active correspondence with many patients who became “family friends.” She retired in 1978 at the age of 65 to her beloved country home in Cotâpre in Burgundy. Cotâpre is a small village, about 250 km from Paris. 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. These 500 children had between them 351 of their own children with only one case of cancer. One of her devoted long-term survivors had moved to the area to look after her in Cotâpre during her declining years. She died there in 2002.

Odile had been the chief of pediatrics at Villejuif since 1951, and around Easter 1952, she managed to persuade the authorities to designate a separate ward for children. Prior to this, children had been treated in the adult wards. Her many attempts to get proper facilities came to a head when there was an outbreak of chickenpox in the ward. The adult nurses had been scraping the crusts off the chickenpox lesions and applying lotions. This resulted in the dissemination of this usually mild disease among the immune-compromised adult patients. Odile told them that she would take the children back to the children’s hospital if they did not give her a separate ward. She was a determined character only wanting what was best for the children. The facilities provided were cramped and spartan at best. Despite these drawbacks, it was a very happy place and Dr. Schweisguth, the nurses, and trainees worked together “like a family.” Eventually, Jean Lemerle joined her in 1966. At about this time, she began to receive visiting doctors from elsewhere in France as well as across Europe (e.g., Tom Voȗte from Amsterdam in 1968, among others). They would stay for a week or two or for several months. The Villejuif unit mainly looked after children with solid tumors, while Professor Jean Bernard looked after children with leukemia at the Hôpital St Louis in Paris. They had a good working relationship. Odile was the undoubted leader and pioneer of pediatric oncology in Europe, and in her travels, and visitors to her own unit, she built up a network of like-minded people who began to meet. These gatherings became more formal, and eventuated in the founding of SIOP, as explained in the Introduction.