Antoine Saugrain

Dr. Antoine François Pierre Saugrain (Paris, France, February 17, 1763 – St. Louis, Missouri, March 5, 1820) was an American French-born physician and chemist.

In 1783 he traveled to North America to serve as a mineralogist for Gilbert Antoine de St. Maxent at New Orleans, where he was admitted to the practice of surgery.

In 1799 the Saugrains moved to St. Louis, a city which had been developed by French immigrants as part of Louisiana (New France).

Saugrain was the first physician west of the Mississippi River to use the Jenner cowpox vaccine to prevent smallpox, beginning in 1809.

The Missouri State Historical Society has a copy of an advertisement of Dr. Saugrain’s offering vaccine to all persons of indigent circumstances as well as to doctors who lived outside his practice area.