Samuel Jean de Pozzi - Life and Medical Career

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 a 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, and had three children: Catherine, Jean, and Jacques. 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, the widow of Georges Bizet, Sarah Bernhardt, and Emma Sedelmeyer Fischof. Daughter of an art dealer and wife of a horse breeder, Fischof was a beautiful, cultured woman of Jewish heritage who became Pozzi's mistress in 1890. His wife refused to grant him a divorce but Firschhof remained his companion for the rest of his life.

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 an 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 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.