Samuel Jean de Pozzi
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Samuel-Jean Pozzi (1846-1918) was a French surgeon and gynecologist. He was also interested in anthropology and neurology and often rumored to be a ladies' man.
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[edit] Life
Samuel-Jean Pozzy (he changed the spelling later) was born in Bergerac, Dordogne to a family of Italian/Swiss descent. His father, Benjamin Dominique Pozzy, was a minister of the Reformed Church of France. His mother, Inés Escot-Meson. died when Pozzi was ten and his father married an Englishwoman named Mary Anne Kempe. Pozzi went to study first to Pau and then to Bordeaux. Due to his handsome appearance and cultured demeanor, other pupils nicknamed him The Siren.
[edit] Life and medical career
In 1864, Pozzi began to his study medicine in Paris. He also met Sarah Bernhardt through a childhood friend, the famed actor Jean Mounet-Sully, and, according to historian and childhood friend Gustave Schlumberger, they briefly became lovers yet remained lifelong friends afterwards.
When the Franco-Prussian War erupted in 1870, Pozzi volunteered and became a medic. Later he became one of the pupils of the neurologist Paul Broca and as his assistant he worked with anthropology, neurology and comparative anatomy. Pozzi graduated as a doctor in 1873. His thesis was of treatment of obstetric fistula.
In 1874 Pozzi and Réné Benoit published a translation of Charles Darwin's Expressions of Emotion in Humans and Animals.In 1875 Pozzi became an university teacher after his second thesis about using hysterotomy for uterine fibroma.
In 1876 Pozzi traveled to Scotland to the Congress of the British Medical Association to meet Joseph Lister whose interest of antiseptics he supported. He later wrote the first French texts about the antiseptic methods. In 1877 Pozzi became chirurgien des hôpitaux
In 1879 Pozzi married Therese Loth-Cazalis, heiress of a railroad magnate. Pozzi did not appreciate the fact that his wife wanted her mother to live with them, a fact that made for a very unhappy marriage. Pozzi also had a number of romances, including those with the opera singer Georgette Leblanc, the actress Rejane and the widow of Georges Bizet.
Pozzi went to study gynecological methods to Austria, Germany and Britain and became one of the pioneers of gynecology in France. He wrote a prominent textbook, Clinical and Operative Gynaecology, which was published 1890 and widely translated.
Pozzi gained a great reputation as a teacher. He preferred to make his rounds dressed in white overalls and wearing a black cap.
In 1881 Pozzi became a hospital surgeon, specializing in gynecological and abdominal surgery. The same year he also became a honorary member of Mirlitons and met the painter John Singer Sargent. Sargent's 1881 portrait of Pozzi depicts him in a red dressing gown and is currently display at the Armand Hammer Museum in Los Angeles.
In 1883 Pozzi was appointed surgeon at the Hôpital de Lourcine-Pascal. After 1884 he gave theoretical lectures in the hospital.
In 1888 he became a president of the Society of Anthropology - he had been a member since 1870. He traveled widely to supplement his knowledge.
Pozzi established the first Chair of Gynecology in Paris in 1884. In 1889 he performed the first gastroenterostomy in France.
In 1890 Pozzi met Emma Fischhof, daughter of an art dealer Charles Sedelmeyer and the wife of horse breeder, Eugene Fischhof. Emma was a beautiful, cultured woman of Jewish heritage who fascinated Dr. Pozzi with her knowledge of art and ancient manuscripts and they become lovers. His wife refused to grant him a divorce but Firschhof remained his companion for the rest of his life and accompanied him in his extensive travels.
In 1896 Pozzi was elected to the French Academy of Medicine. In 1897 Pozzi was a co-founder of the ¨Revue de gynécologie et de chirurgie abdominale. In 1898 he commissioned painter Georges Clairin - probably because of their mutual friendship with Bernhardt - to paint a painting for the wall of his Hospital Lourcine.
In 1898 Sarah Bernhardt let only Pozzi operate her ovarian cyst. In 1913 Pozzi and Georges Clemenceau organized the first transplant symposium in Paris.
In 1914 joined forces again when the First World War erupted and became a military surgeon. In 1915 Sarah Bernhardt called again and Pozzi arranged a colleague to amputate her damaged leg.
[edit] Political and cultural interests
Pozzi also had cultural interest and befriended Marcel Proust and Robert Proust and Robert de Montesquiou. In 1877 Pozzi also befriended poet Louise Ackermann when he asked her to teach him German. Salonniere Lydie Aubernon nicknamed him "the love doctor". Pozzi also corresponded with a feminist writer Augustine Bulteau. He also collected coins and statuettes.
In 1898 Pozzi was elected senator from Bergerac and represented his district for three years. He improved the water supply and sewer drainage of his town and was later involved with the restructuring of the French baccalaureate exams. He did not seek re-election in 1902.
Pozzi also witnessed the second trial of Alfred Dreyfus and supported the side of Emile Zola who rightly believed that Dreyfus was innocent. In 1908 the ashes of Zola were transferred to the Pantheon and both Pozzi and Dreufys were present. When the journalist Gregori shot at Dreyfus and wounded him on the arm, Pozzi rushed to his aid.
[edit] Death
On June 13, 1918 Maurice Machu, former patient from two years before, approached Pozzi in his consulting room. Pozzi had had to amputate his leg and he had become impotent. Machu asked him to operate again. When Pozzi refused because he could not remedy the situation, Machu shot him four times in the stomach. Pozzi ordered himself to be taken to the Historia Hospital but the emergency laparotomy was unsuccessful. He asked to be buried in his military uniform and died shortly afterwards. Machu committed suicide later.
Pozzi was buried in the Protestant cemetery in Bergerac. He was survived by his diplomat son Jean de Pozzi and poet daughter Catherine de Pozzi.
[edit] Selected publications
- Étude sur les fistules de l’espace pelvi-rectal supérieur etc. Doctoral thesis, Paris, 1871
- De la valeur de l’hystérotomie dans le traitement des tumeurs fibreuses de l’utérus. Thèse d’agrégation, Paris, 1875
- Traité de gynécologie clinique et opératoire (Paris, 1890; 2nd edition, 1891; 4th edition, 1905-1907. Translated into six languages.
[edit] References
- Caroline de Costa and Francesca Miller - Portrait of A Ladies'Man: Dr Samuel-Jean Pozzi (History Today March 2006)
