Albert Sézary

Albert Sézary was born in Algiers and studied in Paris. After an outstanding scholastic career he became an interne des hôpitaux d’Alger in 1901. In 1903 he moved to Paris where he became an externe in 1904 and an intern in 1905. He worked with Joseph Jules Dejerine 1849-1917) and Fulgence Raymond (1844-1910) and gained a strong basis in neurology. He worked with Leonard Marie Lucien Jacquet (1860-1914) and Eduard Jeanselme (1858-1935) in dermatology and syphilology.

Sézary received his medical doctorate in 1909. In 1911 he became chef adjoint of the laboratory at the medical clinic in Hôtel-Dieu and head of the medical clinic at the Laennec-hospital. From 1919 to 1926 he was head of the laboratory at the clinic for skin and syphilitic diseases at the Hôpital Saint-Louis. From 1927 he was professeur agrégé for skin and venereal diseases. In 1929 he became chef de service at the hospitals Broca and Saint Louis. He was president of Société française de dermatologie in 1937 and was elected to the l’Académie de Médecine in 1945. He was also Officier de la Légion d’Honneur.

In 1921 Sézary introduced a combination therapy of arsenic and bismuth and demonstrated that this could result in the cure of syphilis after re-infection in many of his patients. He also introduced pentavalent arsenical (sodium acetarsone) in the treatment of general paralysis of the insane (GPI) and at the time this was hailed as a very important contribution to psychiatry.

• Recherches anatomo-pathologiques, cliniques et expérimentales sur les surrénalités acléreuses. Paris, 1909.
  
  
• Tuberculinothérapie et sérothérapie antituberculeuse. Paris, 1912.
  
  
• Microbiologie de la syphilis. Paris, 1912.
  
  
• Précis de syphilographie. Paris, 1921.
  
  
• La syphilis nerveuse. Paris, 1926. 208 pages.
  
  Les traitements modernes de la syphilis. With André Barbé. Paris, 1930.
  
  
• Dermatologie. Paris, 1932.
  
  
• M. Bolgert:
  Albert Sezary, 1880-1856. AMA Archives of Dermatology, Chicago, May 1957, 75 (5): 782-783.