Swiss medical historian whose emphasis on social conditions affecting practice of the art brought a new dimension and level of excellence to his field. A graduate of the University of Zürich, Switz. (M.D. 1917), he succeeded the noted German physician Karl Sudhoff as director and professor of the Institute for the History of Medicine, University of Leipzig, Ger. (1925–32), and followed the renowned U.S. physician William Welch in the corresponding position at the Institute of the History of Medicine, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Md. (1932–47).

His 27 books and 454 papers range from medieval philology to analyses of U.S. and Soviet medicine (American Medicine, 1934, and Socialized Medicine in the U.S.S.R., 1937). Although he was appointed a research associate at Yale University (1947–57) upon his retirement from the Institute, Sigerist spent the remainder of his life in Switzerland, where he completed the first two volumes (1951, 1961; primitive through Greek medicine) of a projected eight-volume History of Medicine.