Suzanne Noël and the birth of reconstructive surgery
- marionjabot
- 6 août 2018
- 3 min de lecture
Dernière mise à jour : 28 août 2018
A bit different from the previous posts, this one will focus on one woman in particular. She was not on the battlefront herself, however indirectly helped the soldiers during the First World War. Or rather – she helped the soldiers to recover part of their humanity and dignity after the war was over.
In conflicts prior to the First World War, a lot of those who suffered from severe facial injuries were left to die on the battleground. More impressive than actually deadly, these injuries were considered too difficult and too costly to treat. Significant changes occurred during the First World War. Battles lasted much longer (5 months for the battle of the Somme, 10 months for Verdun) and firearms became the norm. Trench warfare made the men much more vulnerable and likely to be struck in the face. Health services and medical staff had to adapt to this new situation, and first aid provided to the soldiers was determining whether they would live or die. Picking up soldiers on the battlefield was extremely difficult and dangerous due to the lack of training of doctors, the ongoing battles and poor weather conditions. However, it became clear that waiting until the end of a battle significantly increased the chances of the soldiers dying from infections. After being rescued from the battlefield, the injured men would be brought to sanitary stations more or less far from the front, depending on the seriousness of the injury.
Stitches, while filling holes in the face with tissues from other body parts, became more common. Doctors became increasingly innovative, replacing old techniques with more efficient transplants. To recreate tissues, skin parts and bones were transferred. Bits and pieces were taken here and there, to rebuild a jaw, a nose, a face. The war left a generation of “gueules cassées” (literally: broken faces) and to recover part of their facial traits, many of these young men were ready to undergo innovative and uncertain procedures.
Suzanne Noël was one of the face magicians, a repairer of broken faces. She learned to practice with Dr Morestin, specialised in maxillofacial surgery and a pioneer in reconstructive surgery. Suzanne Noël was amongst the first women to practice in that field, and she dedicated her life to give people new faces. She would perform miracles, building faces almost from scratch. She got inspired by art and tried to re-imagine faces, where nothing was left after pieces of bullets and bombshells had destroyed the fleshes.
Suzanne Noël founded in 1924 the first European branch of the “Soroptimist” club in Paris, a feminine union gathering women of artistic, medical, business branches. Noël wanted to dedicate her life to women, and after the First World War, she opened a plastic surgery practice. She worked for the rich and famous like the French actress Sarah Bernhardt, but also for women who had been dismissed because they were considered too old. By helping them to look younger again, Suzanne Noël wanted to help these women keep their jobs and guarantee them financial independence and emancipation.
About the Soroptimist club and women’s condition, Suzanne Noël wrote:
« Les difficultés ne manquaient pas. D'abord l'idée de club, inconnue en France, pour les femmes... puis nous avions contre nous nos propres maris qui voyaient d'un fort mauvais œil des déjeuners hebdomadaires au restaurant sans leur présence, alors qu'ils restaient à la maison. Ils admettaient fort bien cela pour les rotariens, qui étaient des hommes, mais pas pour leurs femmes.
Il faut penser qu'en 1924 les femmes n'avaient encore aucune liberté personnelle, et celles qui poussaient à ces libérations étaient l'objet de la risée et appelées « suffragettes ». J'étais une des plus visées, portant sur mon chapeau un ruban sur lequel était imprimé en lettres dorées : «Je veux voter.» Le mot « Soroptimist » fait d'un latin... relatif n'était pas fait pour faciliter ma tâche.
Je m'étais en outre spécialisée dans la chirurgie plastique, inconnue jusque-là, et on disait de moi que j'étais deux fois folle. »
She stresses in these few words the difficulty of being both a woman working in a masculine field and of being invested in women’s rights movements like the “Suffragettes” for a right to vote. Moreover, a club constituted just of women who would meet every week for lunch without their husbands was not particularly approved of, especially by these men who were not invited. However, this did not discourage her; over the years she founded clubs in The Hague, Amsterdam, Vienna, Berlin, Antwerp, Geneva, Oslo, Budapest, as well as Pekin and Tokyo.
Suzanne Noël never stopped helping people through her skills, always applying it with the will to improve people’s lives, sometimes even saving them. During the Second World War, Noël helped to transform faces of resistants to the Nazis in France who were searched by the Gestapo. After the war, she helped to erase stigma on survivors from concentration camps.
Book recommendation: "The great swindle", Pierre Lemaitre.
Sources
https://www.gueules-cassees.asso.fr/la-creation-de-l-union-_r_8.html
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