Charles Elmer Sawyer (January 24, 1860 – September 23, 1924) was a homeopathic physician who was the longtime personal doctor to U.S. President Warren G. Harding and First Lady Florence Kling Harding. Sawyer is often blamed in the matter of Harding's death in 1923.

Education and private practice

Sawyer was born in Wyandot, Ohio, and raised in Nevada, Ohio, in Wyandot County, the eldest of six children and only one to survive to adulthood. He married May Elizabeth Barron. Sawyer had one son, Carl, born in 1881.

Sawyer was an 1881 graduate of the Cleveland Homeopathic Hospital College, Cleveland, Ohio, earning his degree in homeopathy, and began his practice outside of LaRue, Ohio, in western Marion County, Ohio. Following a brief period in Indianapolis, the Sawyers returned to Marion in 1895 where Dr. Sawyer began the construction of a modern sanatorium for the treatment of medical and emotional maladies. This building was built in three stages and is currently located on South Main Street in Marion, Ohio; the building is currently known as the Elite (E-light) Apartments. Sawyer also operated the Parkview Sanatorium in Columbus, Ohio, under the corporate name of "Ohio Sanatorium Company".

He also became the director of the Marion National Bank and president of the Marion Masonic Temple Company. Sawyer was also a director of the Marion Commercial Club. He was an atheist. had diagnosed the condition while Harding was on tour in Alaska. Sawyer deferred to the attending physician; however, Harding insisted on finishing the trip. It has even been speculated that Sawyer's use of harsh purgatives was the cause of Harding's fatal heart attack. The nursing notes from President Harding's medical records do not support this contention. Harding died of congestive heart failure and suffered a fatal heart attack. Harding's medical records from the western trip (the six-week trip during which he died) exist, and they show a man suffering from high blood pressure, chest pains, respiratory discomfort, indigestion, etc. Cardiac medicine was in its infancy, and these symptoms, while very recognizable symptoms in the modern day, were not automatic signals then for an impending catastrophic event. At Sawyer's recommendation, Mrs. Harding did not have an autopsy performed.

Following the President's death, Sawyer resigned his commission, and focused his attention on the formation of the Harding Memorial Association, to which the task of designing and building the Harding Memorial in Marion fell. Sawyer died within a month of the announcement that a location had been secured, which delayed completion of the marble memorial until December 1927. The memorial was dedicated in 1931 by President Herbert Hoover.

Sawyer's practice and leadership within the Harding Memorial Association fell to his son, Dr. Carl Sawyer, who ran both organizations until his death in the late 1960s. In the 1980s, the Harding Memorial and the Harding Home were transferred to the Ohio Historical Society.

References

  • Illustrated Sawyer biography on Homéopathe International site
  • Sawyer entry from History of Homœopathy Biographies
  • Advertisement, "Dr. C. E. Sawyer's Private Sanitarium"