Antoine Saugrain

Antoine Saugrain, born Antoine François Pierre Saugrain in 1763, was a French-born American physician and chemist who lived until 1820. Trained in medicine and chemistry in Paris, he crossed to North America in 1783 and was admitted to the practice of surgery in New Orleans. After fleeing France at the start of the Revolution he returned to the United States, helped found the French émigré community at Gallipolis, Ohio, and in 1799 settled in St. Louis, where he was the city's only physician until the United States took possession of the territory in 1803. He prepared specimens for Meriwether Lewis and supplied the Lewis and Clark Expedition with medical supplies. From 1809 he was the first physician west of the Mississippi River to use Jenner's cowpox vaccine against smallpox, and he offered it to everyone regardless of ability to pay. He also worked in mineralogy, physics and chemistry and made thermometers and barometers.