The professor Samuel Jean Pozzi was a famous French doctor born with Bergerac (the Dordogne) the October 3rd 1846 and died in Paris the June 13rd 1918.

A brilliance doctor

Resulting from a family of Italian origin, it made its studies in Pau and Bordeaux and began its studies of medicine in Paris in 1869. Student shining, one of the preferred pupils of Broca, he was preparer of anatomy whereas he was yet only student, extern of Paris in 1866, intern in 1868. He obtained his doctorate in 1873 then aggregation in 1875 and became surgeon of the hospitals (1877). In 1883, it was named at the Hospital of Lourcine-Pascal (renamed Hôpital Broca later).

A skilful surgeon

Excel surgeon, it initiated as of 1876 at Lister (with Edinburgh) with the bandages disinfectants, result of the theories of Pasteur, that with others it introduced and spread in France. He also made know work of Alexis Carrel on the transplantation of bodies and the culture of fabrics. During the First World War, it was one of the first to use the processes of disinfection of the wounds imagined by Carrel.

It approached one of the first the surgery of the abdomen as a practitioner in 1889 the first gastro-enterotomy carried out in France, but also the joining of the bladder after know-pubic size, the choledocotomy, the joining of hepatic fabric after extraction of a cyst hydatic, etc

A pioneer of gynecology

With the passing of years, it was devoted more and more to the gynecology of which it was one of the pioneers in France and undertook many study trips in England, Germany and Austria. It arranged its service of the Broca hospital in the most modern way, going until decorating the walls with them with fabrics of known artists. It is there that it founded a famous school of gynecology, until a gynaecological pulpit of private clinic is created in 1911 at the Medical college, of which he became the first holder.

He was especially a partisan of preserving gynecology, refusing the systematic ablation of the uterus and the ovaries and being interested in the repairing operations of the congenital or acquired mutilations.

Author of many studies of gynecology, he is especially the author of important Traité of clinical and operational gynecology, which knew several editions since 1890 and which was translated into Spanish, German, English, Italian, Russian and Arabic. He also published many articles in the Bulletin of the national Academy of medicine

In 1896, it was elected member of the Académie of medicine. In 1897, it founded the Revue gynecology and of abdominal surgery . It took part in the creation of the Congress of surgery.

A society man

Gynecologist and surgeon with the mode of the aristocracy and the upper middle classes, it looks after in particular Robert de Montesquiou, Prince Edmond de Polignac, Anatole France and the Rothschild. The divergent opinion as for its medical competence. Robert Proust, brother of Marcel, which was his assistant at the Broca hospital in 1914, held it in high regard, but Leon Daudet, itself doctor, said: “I would not entrust my hair to him, especially if there were an ice. ”

An unrepentant seducer

Pozzi was indeed extremely vain: it was made paint by John Singer Sargent wrapped in a sumptuous scarlet dressing gown. Mrs. Aubernon called it “the love doctor” (title of a comedy of Molière) while Sarah Bernhardt, one of its many conquests, called it in all simplicity “Doctor God”.

Married to Therese Loth-Cazalis, relationship of Doctor Cazalis, that Mrs. Aubernon called “the dumb woman of Pozzi”, it had a girl, the poetess Catherine Pozzi, born on July 13rd 1883, and two wire, Jacques and Jean. Unsteady husband, not hesitating to allure his patients, it comforted his wife of his inaccuracies while saying to him: “I did not mislead you, my expensive, I supplemented you. ”

A curious spirit

Being interested in Antiquity, Pozzi collected the coins and the statuettes, in particular will tanagras them. In 1888, he became president of the Company of Anthropology.

It was also interested in the medical history, and put forth the assumption that the death of the princess Henriette, girl of Charles Ier, was the result of a extra-uterine pregnancy.

Of 1897 with 1902, he was senator of the the Dordogne. Supporter of Dreyfus, it attended the living rooms of Mrs. Emile Straus, of Mrs. Aubernon de Nerville, the Mathilde princess and the Potocka countess.

A supposed model of Proust

Familiar of the doctor Adrien Proust, Pozzi meets Marcel Proust during a dinner given by his/her parents in 1886 and became its doctor. In 1914, it is him which got the exemption to him which enabled him not to be sent to the face.

It is perhaps one of the models of Doctor Cottard in With the Research of Time lost .

A fine tragedy

At the beginning of the First World War, Pozzi, which had been volunteer in 1870, took again service in spite of its age and, in the capacity as principal doctor, directed several rooms of wounded to the hospital of the street Lhomond and that of the Astoria hotel.

He was assassinated on June 13rd 1918, by one of his patients struck of insanity which sifted to him the abdomen of several balls of gun. An operation tried by its pupil, Doctor Martel, could not save it. The event caused a great emotion.

Its funerals had him to it on Tuesday, June 18, 1918 with the reformed church of the Large-Army, in Paris. According to its wish it was buried in its military uniform in its birthplace of Bergerac.

Residences

• Private mansion n° 47 (today 49 and 51) Which occurred of Iéna (sold in 1897 with Rodolphe and Maurice Kann)

• Apartment n° 10 Place Vendôme (1897-1918)

Works

• Study on the dents of higher pelvi-rectal space (1871)

• Of the value of the hysterotomy in the treatment of the fibrous tumors of the uterus (1875)
• Treated clinical and operational gynecology (1890)
• Inversion of the genital direction in a female pseudohermaphrodite and sarcome of the left ovary operated successfully , Bulletin of the national Academy of medicine (1911)