By the early 20th century, Dr. Pozzi had garnered a worldwide reputation as a physician and still remained a vibrant figure. He was part of the medical vanguard of the early 20th century and was fascinated by every newest innovation, even utilizing electrical currents as a precursor to modern laser therapy. In 1909, Dr. Pozzi and E. Doyen reported using d'Arsonval currents (low density high frequency currents used in medical treatments) to destroy a variety of surface cancers with high frequency, high tension sparks from a device called “Oudin's resonator”. Pozzi introduced the descriptive term "fulguration" for this procedure.

Even at his advanced age, Pozzi continued to be a world traveler and in early 1911, embarked on a South American adventure at the helm of a scientific expedition to Argentina and Brazil. After leaving Buenos Aires, he and his team journeyed from Rio de Janeiro to the famed Brazilian herpetological (poisonous snakes and frogs) collection at the Butantan Institute in Sao Paulo, Brazil. The so-called Garden of Serpents was renowned for the study of snake venom and its effect on the human population. Pozzi wrote about his adventures with the spirit and enthusiasm of a young boy and the Smithsonian Institute published a portion of his colorful memoir in 1912. Upon his return to France, he co-authored one of the earliest treatises on the transgendered, The Inversion of the Genital Direction in a Female Pseudo hermaphrodite and was the leading authority in Europe on hermaphrodites. Pozzi was one of the first physicians to document the case study of a patient with genitals of both genders and discussed “homosexuality like psychic effect” of the transgendered and its affects on the behavior of hermaphrodite her had treated or as the French expressed it, “the ‘brain of man in a body of woman’. Dr. Alice Dreger, an American academic, an activist on behalf of intersexuals, acknowledged Pozzi’s contributions in the treatment of transgendered individuals in a recent paper noting “the real gains made by such pioneers as Samuel Pozzi, a surgeon who discovered the dangers of testicular cancer for hermaphrodites.”

Pozzi remained a striking figure well into his seventies, an esteemed doyen and the elder statesman of French medicine, still a distinguished figure changed from the dark beauty of the Sargent painting. While on his rounds at the Hospital of Lourcine-Pascal which has now been renamed the Broca Hospital, Pozzi continued to dress in spotless white overalls and wear his trademark black Florentine cap over his now silvery hair. When his famed black beard turned white, he shaped it into an elegant goatee. At an age when most Frenchmen were either dead, obese or in their dotage, Pozzi was vigorous and mentally acute. In spite of an expanded waistline, the good doctor was still the picture of sartorial elegance and continued to lecture on gynecology at the Broca; a very young Dr. Ferdinand Lamaze was one of his students and noted attending weekly lectures with the now venerable Professor Pozzi in his journal. In addition to his work at the Broca Hospital, Sam Pozzi shared a surgical practice at Avenue d’Iéna with his assistant, Robert Proust, the brilliant and often overlooked younger brother of Marcel Proust.

As the possibility of war loomed on the horizon, Pozzi became particularly impressed by the work of French surgeon, Alexis Carrel, on organ transplantation and tissue culture at the Rockefeller Institute. Carrel won the Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine in 1912 and in 1913, Pozzi, Carrel and French Prime Minister Clemenceau, who was also a trained physician, hosted the first world symposium on organ transplantation at the Broca Hospital. Pozzi’s daughter, Catherine, was also in attendance.

With the outbreak of W.W.I, Pozzi once again was witness to France being attacked from the German front. He re-enlisted at the age of 68 and exchanged his overalls for the military uniform of a surgeon-colonel. Consumed with the French cause, Pozzi used his still considerable energy to nursing the sick and wounded of the French military. He spent his days tending the wounded at the front or while in Paris, crossing the blockaded streets to attend to sick friends. He held regular meetings of medical professionals in his dispensary at the Broca Hospital and arranged for a number of skilled physicians to donate their medical and surgical skills in service to the French Government and the Red Cross Society for the remainder of the war. He continued his work in women’s health and treated syphilitic prostitutes with the crude mercury based remedies of the day.

Sam Pozzi’s relationship with the Divine Sarah again took prominence when an old injury caused her extreme emotional and physical distress. She had injured her right leg while on tour in Rio de Janeiro and by 1911 could not walk unsupported. Dr. Pozzi’s connection to the eventual amputation of the Divine Sarah’s leg has often been noted by Bernhardt biographers who were not aware of the depth of her connection with Samuel Pozzi. Arthur Gold and Robert Fizdale wrote the story in vivid detail in the excellent biography, The Divine Sarah, a Life of Sarah Bernhardt and it is our source.

When war broke out, Sarah Bernhardt was in Paris. Her old friend, Georges Clemenceau, convinced the French icon to leave the City of Lights because the Germans had placed the Divine Sarah on a list of hostages to be shipped to Berlin if they captured the city. Sarah was escorted out of the city and sent this letter to Pozzi from Bordeaux.

February 4, 1915

My beloved Docteur Dieu, I beg you to take this letter seriously. On February seventh my leg will have been in a plaster cast for six months. I was suffering more than more than ever and asked the surgeon, Denucé, to remove it. The cast that pierced my flesh caused the pain. It was nothing: it has healed; but it is as painful now as it was before. Listen to me, my adored friend. I beg you. Cut of my leg a little above the knee. Do not protest. I have perhaps ten or fifteen years left. Why condemn me to inactivity? Even with a celluloid cast I shall be handicapped and won’t be able to perform. And horror of horrors, I shall always be in pain. My nights will always be anguished for it is then that my knee hurts most, nothing but my knee. With a well-constructed wooden leg I’ll be able to give poetry reading and even make lecture tours. I’ll be free to come and go without pain. Therefore, I beg you to cut off my leg, or give orders to have it done.

I cannot bear to be useless, confined to a chair as I have been for six months. It’s clear to me that my leg will never fuse; I ‘m not young enough for that. I am not a conservationist by nature and I don’t give a hoot for my leg. Let it run about where it wishes. If you refuse me, I’ll shoot a bullet into my knee and it will have to be cut off. My friend, don’t think I’m hysterical. No, I’m calm and cheerful. I want to leave what life remains to me, or die at once. You understand, my dear Sam, that between one apparatus and the other I prefer a wooden leg. That way I could take it off and bathe every day. That alone would improve my health a hundred percent. I’ll give lecture tours. I’ll give lessons, and be gay. I don’t want to lose my gaiety. At this moment, lads of twenty are losing their legs, and their arms, meant for embraces. And you refuse me! No, it’s impossible. My leg must be cut off immediately. After a month I’ll be free. Don’t abandon me in this last painful stage. Be my devoted friend and I’ll come running to Paris and give you my let to cut. I embrace you in all my loving gratitude…Sarah.

Four day before the operation, Sarah sent a wire to Dr. Pozzi.

“I spent the night in atrocious pain unable to take any more pills. I beg you to operate one day earlier. It’s mad, it’s odious. My friend, put an end to this useless torture.”

Since the “one day earlier” was a Sunday, Pozzi was unable to reschedule the operation. In the end, afraid that Sarah might die under his hand, he authorized Denucé, a former student of his, to take his place. Pozzi selected the anesthetist, a young woman named Mademoiselle Coignt who left a record of the sad event that revealed Sarah to be the consummate diva even while facing an amputation.

At 10 A.M. the great artist was wheeled into the operating room. She was dressed in a white satin peignoir and swathed in pink crepe-de-chine veils. She seemed very calm. She sent for her son Maurice who came to embrace her. During the tender scene she was heart to say “Au revoir, my beloved, my Maurice, au revoir. There, there, I’ll be back soon.” It was in the same voice I heard in La Tosca, La Dame aux Camélias, L’Aiglon. When the ether mask was placed over her face, she became the tragedienne. “I’m choking. I’m suffocating. Take it off! I’ll never fall asleep. Why this ether? Chloroform would have been better!” Moments later she muttered, “Ah! That’s good. It’s working, it’s working. I’m going, going, going. I’m gone.”

After the operation, after the ligatures were sewn and the wound dress, the great tragedienne was wheeled back into her room, crowned by her peignoir and sating-lined sheepskin. Coignt noted: “The drama continues. One feels she is always acting, playing the role of someone who has just undergone a grave operation. Later that day I found the patient exactly the same as the woman I admired on the stage. Her eyes were made up, her lips painted. It was a great joy for me to be so close to the actress, who, one might say, has ruled the universe through her art.”

After the operation, Denucé wrote to Pozzi: “Operation completed…very rapid. No problems…used minimum ether. All goes well.”

Two months later, Sarah was her old self again and wrote to Pozzi.

How is it that my infinite love and gratitude over so many years have not taken root and blossomed in your heart??? How is it that I feel the need to tell you again and again that there is no being dearer to me than you? Can it be, dear friend that I must open the box of memories we share to let you breathe the perfume of those flowers we gathered together in the garden of Life! No, I have not written to you! Why? There is no Why! There is no “Because”! I love you tenderly, infinitely. I love you with all the vital and intellectual force of my being, and nothing, nothing could change this feeling, greater than Friendship, more divine than Love…Sarah
In 1916, Pozzi operated on young man named Maurice Machu. The severity of Machu’s injuries necessitated that his leg be amputated up to the thigh and because of an infection in the groin area, the removal of a testicle. In the days prior to the discovery of antibiotics, the only cure for infection was amputation and in attempting to save Machu’s life, Pozzi and his surgical team followed the medical protocol of the day, partially castrating his patient. Machu was rendered impotent and wrote to Dr. Pozzi, requesting additional treatments. Pozzi realized the futility of more surgery and refused to operate again.

On June 13, 1918, a demented Machu hobbled into Pozzi ‘s office and murdered him in his consulting room. In a crazed frenzy, Machu shot Dr. Pozzi four times in the abdomen then committed suicide immediately afterwards. A surgical incision revealed perforations of the abdomen, and a laceration of the kidney was discovered. As a doctor and politician, he had escaped a bullet on more than one occasion and treated countless soldiers for wounds of the gut. Pozzi must have realized his end was at hand, calmly directed the surgical team. Resigned to his eminent death, he requested to be buried in his military uniform.

Bernhardt, who was touring in the United States at the time of his death, was devastated and joined her Doctor Dieu in death five years later. In a letter to Isabella Stewart Gardner, her cousin, Ralph Curtis, referred to Pozzi as “the great and beautiful Pozzi.” At his death his lifelong friend and fellow aesthete, Count Robert de Montesquiou, spoke of him in these terms, “I have never met a man of such glowing charms. Whenever I saw him, he was smiling, gracious and incomparably himself.”

Pozzi’s dear friend, Augustine Bulteau, wrote about his state funeral for La Figuero. Afterwards, his body was transported to Bergerac and now rests in Pont-St.-Jean, the Protestant cemetery in Bergerac along with the Protestant Pozzi clan. In 1919, the hospital in Bergerac that Pozzi was so instrumental in building was renamed the Samuel Pozzi Hospital.

Thérèse lived on as the widow Pozzi surrounded by photographs of her dead husband and according to her grandson, Claude Bourdet, always regretted her inability to look past her husband’s transgressions. She became a published author and continued using her married name, Thérèse Pozzi. Emma Fischhof, Thérèse’s rival for her husband’s affections, lived on too. After Pozzi’s death and the end to their twenty-eight year relationship, she wrote to Jean requesting he return the love letters she and Pozzi shared. Unfortunately, Jean refused and they were burned in the inferno that consumed so many of Pozzi's personal documents.

The surviving members of the family continued treks to La Graulet, the family mansion in Bergerac. When Thérèse passed away in 1932, she joined her husband in Bergerac but, even in death, fate again separated them; her faith dictated that she be buried in Beauferrier, the traditional Catholic cemetery. Catherine entertained her lover the writer Paul Valéry at La Graulet and upon her death from tuberculosis in 1935 was also buried in Bergerac. Jacques, Jean and the rest of the Pozzi clan also rest there.

In Summation

Catherine Pozzi

Nyx
by Catherine Pozzi

O vous mes nuits, ô noires attendues
O pays fier, ô secrets obstinés
O longs regards, ô foudroyantes nues
O vol permis outre les cieux fermés.

O grand désir, ô surprise épandue
O beau parcours de l’esprit enchanté
O pire mal, ô grâce descendue
O porte ouverte où nul n’avait passé

Je ne sais pas pourquoi je meurs et noie
Avant d’entrer à l’éternel séjour.
Je ne sais pas de qui je suis la proie.
Je ne sais pas de qui je suis l’amour.

Nyx (English translation)
by Catherine Pozzi

O you, my nights, O long-awaited blackness,
O proud country, O obstinate secrets,
O long looks, O thundering clouds
O flight beyond skies which are closed

O great desire, O scattered surprise
O beautiful journey of th’ enchanted sprite
O worst evil, O grace that flies
O open door where we enter night

I don’t know why I die today
Before th’ eternal rest above.
I don’t know for whom I’m prey
I don’t know for whom I’m love.

In Summation

Catherine Pozzi

Despite tortuous bouts of suffering from advanced tuberculosis, Catherine Pozzi became a woman of letters and is now considered one of the great poets of modern France. Her legacy is presently going through a renaissance, attracting legends of new fans across the globe. Though her relationship with her father was often rancorous, there was no doubt that she loved him deeply and mourned him when he died. She is remembered as a diarist and as one of the first women to write about the menarche and the effects of puberty on her body. Though she as coaxed away from Oxford by her mother, she eventually returned to her studies. She completed her baccalaureate at Strasbourg then went on to study biology at the Faculte des Sciences in Paris. She also wrote articles on science for Le Figaro, and translated the poetry of Stefan George. Her journals, articles, her philosophical essay, Peau d'ame, and an autobiographical story, Agnes, are parts of her legacy along with her poetry. She thought only six of her poems worthy of being immortalized in print. "I would like them to be edited as a booklet," she wrote in 1934. "Sappho too has survived time with a few verses." These jewels of verse have been described as “expressive of a timeless and painful spirituality, the true essence of Pozzi's lyrical work” and it is now de rigueur to include her six poems, Ave, Vale, Scopolamine, Nova, Maya, and Nyx in any serious anthology of French poetry. Unfortunately for the world, Catherine was afflicted with tuberculosis and succumbed to her disease in 1935.

Nyx
by Catherine Pozzi

O vous mes nuits, ô noires attendues
O pays fier, ô secrets obstinés
O longs regards, ô foudroyantes nues
O vol permis outre les cieux fermés.

O grand désir, ô surprise épandue
O beau parcours de l’esprit enchanté
O pire mal, ô grâce descendue
O porte ouverte où nul n’avait passé

Je ne sais pas pourquoi je meurs et noie
Avant d’entrer à l’éternel séjour.
Je ne sais pas de qui je suis la proie.
Je ne sais pas de qui je suis l’amour.

Nyx (English translation)
by Catherine Pozzi

O you, my nights, O long-awaited blackness,
O proud country, O obstinate secrets,
O long looks, O thundering clouds
O flight beyond skies which are closed

O great desire, O scattered surprise
O beautiful journey of th’ enchanted sprite
O worst evil, O grace that flies
O open door where we enter night

I don’t know why I die today
Before th’ eternal rest above.
I don’t know for whom I’m prey
I don’t know for whom I’m love.

Jean Pozzi

Jean Pozzi became an archeologist and was renowned as a noted collector of ceramics, tapestries and Egyptian statuary. After a stint as mayor of Cours De Pile, Jean Pozzi entered the diplomatic corps and was appointed the French Ambassador to both Persia and eventually Egypt; unfortunately, against the advice of many of his friends Jean became associated with the hated Vichy government. He and his wife, a woman of Egyptian/Greek extraction, were ostracized by half the French community and under, British pressure, were declared persona non grata by the Egyptian government and were forced to leave Egypt; unfortunately, Jean’s reputation dissuaded the French government from accepting portions of the Pozzi art collection.

Jean’s disgrace was atoned for by the activity of Claude Bourdet, Catherine Pozzi’s only child, a patriot who as a leader in the French Resistance during W.W. II faced imprisonment by the Gestapo and was forced to flee with his family to Switzerland. During the 1950’s, Bourdet became a leading voice opposing France’s imperialism in Indochina and later, the brutality of French colonialists in Algeria with a treatise that in a tribute to the Dreyfus affair was called J’accuse. Claude also was noted for his efforts in the field of nuclear disarmament. Another Pozzi of note, Samuel Pozzi’s nephew, Henri Pozzi, warned about a potential blood bath between the Croatians and the Serbians in his best selling book book, Black Hand Over Europe.

Aside from his achievements in gynecological surgery, Samuel-Jean Pozzi’s legend was largely unknown in the United States until his portrait was displayed at the Armand Hammer Museum in November of 1990. The remarkably contemporary painting of the debonair physician intrigued all who saw it, but the subject remained a mystery man, still as Stanley Olson called him, “the elusive Dr. Pozzi”. In 1992, under the auspices of Claude Bourdet, Dr. Claude Vanderpooten published his biography, Samuel Pozzi - Chirurgien et Ami des Femmes, a volume that has not yet been translated from the original French.

Samuel Pozzi’s provocative personality continues to elicit interest from the world of art and literature. Musician Patrick Soluri, a member of the Pozzi Posse, created Madame X, a ballet in four scenes that debuted in New York City in 1999. In 1998, Pozzi scholar Linda Hollander began work on her study of Dr. Pozzi life and, in 2002, Professor Lawrence Joseph, retired head of the French Language Department of Smith College, lectured on Pozzi’s correspondence with Marcel Proust. Professor Joseph is the noted biographer of Pozzi’s daughter, the poet Catherine Pozzi, and continues to participate in seminars focusing on Pozzi along with Pozzi’s great grandchildren, Nicholas Bourdet and Catherine Bourdet-Scipion. Dr. William G. Shaffer of Illinois College has lectured on Dr. Pozzi’s relationship with Sarah Bernhardt. In 2003, three works which prominently featured Dr. Pozzi were published: Samuel Pozzi, the second biography by Claude Vanderpooten, Deborah Davis’s Strapless, John Singer Sargent and the Fall of Madame X, and the fictional work, I Am Madame X by Gioia Diliberto. His presence on Natasha Wallace’s web site, the John Singer Sargent Virtual Gallery, www.jssgallery.org, continues to intrigue aficionados around the world. His image on the walls of the Armand Hammer Museum in Los Angeles continues to captivate all who see it.

We do know that Samuel-Jean Pozzi was a brilliant, charming and handsome physician. We also know that despite his unhappy marriage and troubled personal life, Dr. Pozzi counted both the Parisian elite and the poorest of the poor among his friends and comrades. We know he had a complicated relationship with his wife Therese and his daughter Catherine, the precocious little girl with a prodigious intellect whose fame, at least in Europe, has surpassed that of her extraordinary father. We also know that Dr. Pozzi’s ministrations saved the lives of thousands, that he was a published poet, an art collector, a linguist, a patriot, a world traveler, a devoted father and friend, a scientist, a writer, an expert on rare coinage and above all, a pioneer in the field of gynecology and endocrinology, and a great friend to women.

For that, we give you our thanks, Sam.

References

The information about Dr. Pozzi’s interest in using electricity came from Applications of Electrical Energy to the Prostrate: An Evolutionary Perspective, the Journal of Urology, 1998. Charles Inman Barnard mentioned Pozzi’s donation of his dispensary to the Red Cross in his memoir, Paris War Days, Diary of an American, New York, 1914. The information on Jean Pozzi and his Egyptian experiences during W.W. II was found in the English language Egyptian newspaper, Al-Ahram Weekly, from an interview by journalist Samir Raafat with Marie-Alice Leclercq. The colorful account of the amputation of Sarah’s leg was found in The Divine Sarah, A Life of Sarah Bernhardt, Arthur Gold and Robert Fizdale

Assorted works by Dr. Samuel-Jean Pozzi include 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: Samuel Pozzi's On the indications for the use of the trephine, derived from cerebral localisation and the relation of the cranium to the brain (The basis for the Gulstonian Lectures on The Localisation of Cerebral Disease in by David Ferrier in 1878) Traité de gynécologie clinique et opératoire, Paris, 1890; 2nd edition, 1891, 4th edition, 1905-190 (This treatise has been translated into German, English, and Russian and won him the title of Laureate of the Institute; L'expression des émotions chez l'homme et les animaux, Paris 1890, Inversion du sens génital chez un pseudo-hermaphrodite feminine: Sarcome de l'ovaire gauche opéré avec success, Paris, 1911; The Garden of Serpents, Butantan, Brazil, Paris,1911, published by the Smithsonian, On the indications for the use of the Trephine, Derived from Cerebral Localization and the Relation of the Cranium to the Brain, translated by Thomas Michael Dolan from Les Archives Générales de Médecine, Paris, date unknown.