[1][2] Before entering college, Saul Jarcho studied German, French, and Latin, as well as ancient and modern Hebrew.
He spent the summer of 1926 at the American Academy in Rome, where he studied ancient monuments and gained enthusiasm for learning Italian.
[3] After receiving his medical degree, Jarcho spent the summer of 1930 at Puerto Rico's School of Tropical Medicine.
A minor part of Jarcho's duty was to assist in preparation of specimens for the hospital's outstanding anatomical museum (which was eliminated in 1974).
He became an advanced student in colloquial Egyptian Arabic, given in a course at Columbia University and supported but the Intensive Language Program of the American Council of Learned Societies.
He began military service in October 1942 as a captain in the U.S. Army and was discharged in June 1946 with the rank of lieutenant colonel.
About three years later, in October 1948, he married Irma Seijo (1918–2014), who was a research analyst from 1945 to 1948 in Latin American Medical Intelligence for the United States Army's Surgeon General's Office.
[20][21][22][23][24] Jarcho was well aware that for most Americans untranslated works remain unread, so he made a lifelong effort to translate important medical literature ranging from classical antiquity to the recent past.
The father of the three siblings was Julius Jarcho (1882–1963), a distinguished obstetrician and a generous donor to medical libraries in Israel.