Suzanne Noël, pioneer of cosmetic surgery

On this June day in 1912, in this avenue as wide and silent as a cemetery alley, a young woman still hesitates to ring the doorbell of a handsome, opulent building. Behind this door, however, hides the woman she has come to meet, the star of the age: the great Sarah Bernhardt. She has just returned from the United States with a spectacular rejuvenation, which the newspapers are raving about.

The young woman's name is Suzanne, Suzanne Noël. She wants to be a surgeon. But for the moment, she's mostly intrigued by what's being said about the great actress, and wants to know more about what Dr. Charles Miller has done in Chicago. And she dares to ask for an interview with the famous actress, who, to her own surprise, quickly grants her an appointment. Suzanne has already performed minor cosmetic operations and even tried her hand at facelifts on willing patients. But she was determined to see the star's operation up close and understand Miller's technique:
- Sarah Bernhardt received me charmingly and explained what had been done to her in the United States. Miller had taken a simple strip from ear to ear in her scalp... While the result had been quite effective for the upper face, softening forehead wrinkles and erasing crow's feet, it had done nothing to alter the lower face.

Suzanne, listening only to her passion, explained to Sarah Bernhardt the benefits of a facelift for the lower part of the face, to erase neck wrinkles and sagging cheeks. The most extraordinary aspect of this exchange was Sarah's acceptance of the young woman's modest experience. The operation took place in 1912 under local anaesthetic, using bare hands and without a mask or sterile gown. It was a success. And Sarah was soon back on stage, once again attracting crowds of admirers. In fact, this is not Dr Noël's first experience. She had tried her first experiment back in 1910, when she restored a presentable face to a young laboratory assistant disfigured by an unfortunate splash of sulfuric acid.

For the time being, she took the initiative of writing to Charles Miller to inform him of what she called a miracle. He immediately wrote back to her in a very confraternal, American way, encouraging her to continue her work in this field:
- I then decided to devote myself to this surgery mistakenly called aesthetic surgery, since for my part I was simply going to try to combat nature's errors or life's accidents, and not just repair the ravages of time.

For the moment, she's still only a hospital extern, operating under the authority of her husband. But Suzanne wants to become a full-fledged surgeon and has to pass the Internat des Hôpitaux. Very few surgeons have ventured into this field before her. Despite her family obligations, she threw herself into preparing for the competitive examination in Paris. Little does she know that, in a few months' time, she will be 4th out of 67 candidates, having obtained the highest mark in the written exam. She is 34 years old.

But let's go back for a moment, to retrace the path that brought Suzanne Noël into the arms of Sarah Bernhard. Suzanne was born into a bourgeois family in Laon in 1878. Married at 19 to a young doctor who had just finished his studies in Paris, she decided, with his consent (essential in those days!), to study medicine herself. But first things first. Suzanne was by no means completely ignorant, but first she had to pass the baccalauréat, which in the early 20th century was no mere formality! She obtained her baccalaureate at the age of 25, which enabled her to enroll in the Faculty of Science, where she was taught by the PCN. In 1908, she was appointed as a hospital extern. Stubborn, courageous and defying all the prejudices of her time, Suzanne pursued her path with success, achieved by dint of her knowledge and talent, despite the fact that her male teachers (and fellow students) were not inclined to make things easy for her.

As is so often the case in medicine, encounters determine vocations. For her first internship, she was assigned to the department of the great Hippolyte Morestin, a pioneer in maxillofacial surgery, who immediately operated on a child disfigured by a horrible burn scar. The result was perfect, and the case was made: Suzanne would also be a plastic surgeon.

From 1913 onwards, Suzanne performed minor cosmetic and reconstructive operations on patients at the Hôpital Saint-Louis, and developed outpatient surgery in her own apartment, operating on patients under local anaesthetic, in particular face lifts, which she performed in several stages through a succession of small incisions using instruments she had designed herself. This was the time of first successes, rewarding and well-paid operations, such as that of a Serbian colleague:
- A Serbian woman doctor was operated on by me one evening at 6 o'clock in the evening toilet, as she had to dine at the embassy at 8 o'clock. She had a dazzling success; all the guests who knew her attributed her most perfect beauty to the admirable dress she was wearing. The next day she left for Vienna, from where her husband, also a doctor, telegraphed me a few days later: "Sons taken by me, wonderful result, absolute gratitude.

But this is not the kind of practice Suzanne really wants. The surgeon must have a social role. And she's going to get it! The war would plunge her into a mad rush, where her budding discipline would be at the forefront of her efforts to help her martyred children.

In 1916, Suzanne joins Morestin at the Val de Grâce. Screams, cries, smashed skulls, gouged eyes, ripped jaws, gaping throats... Thousands of young men poured in as fast as their frightened families fled. They were known as the "droolers", the "wounded in the face", then the "broken faces" (the expression would come to be used), hiding their slaughtered future and their despair under makeshift masks that left some with only the hope of committing suicide. Some doctors give in to this new pathology of the trenches and look the other way.
But not all. Assisted by Suzanne, whose dexterity and eagerness to identify with desperate causes he knew well, Morestin stitched up the gaping wounds, rebuilt the tissue and reinserted the muscles. He inaugurated what he called "autoplasty by patience", where all the scattered pieces of bone and flesh had to be found to put the puzzle back together, and performed the first skin and bone grafts. Together, they try to give a new human face to those who can no longer stand their own mirror, helping them to breathe, chew, in short, to support themselves in an attempt to survive... Suzanne, who haunts galleries and museums in her spare time, is unrivalled when it comes to recreating a face.
But for her, the end of the war does not mean the end of her torments. As a child, she lost her father, two brothers and a sister. Serious health problems slowed down her studies. In 1918, her first husband died after inhaling poison gas. She remarried André Noël, the lover she had known during her studies, and moved in with him on rue Marbeuf. He treated syphilis; she practiced minor outpatient surgery. The horizon brightened, but in 1922, it was his daughter Jacqueline, so gifted on the violin, who died of Spanish flu. André Noël never recovered. He sank into depression and ended up throwing himself into the Seine before his wife's eyes, leaving her riddled with debt. Suzanne reacts by waging a new battle, and then goes to great lengths to have Paris bridges fitted with lifebuoys... And gets it!
The feminist
She needs to rebuild herself after repairing others. The opportunity comes from the Americans: the Soroptimist clubs (sisters for the better) are looking for a beachhead in Europe to support women's suffrage. The cause of women has always been hers, and she embraces it, traveling the world to open new branches, while giving lectures on her plastic surgery practice. And then she finally had to pass her thesis, as she had been practicing under the authority of her husband's doctor, who had just died, and she was no longer allowed to practice medicine. At the age of 48, she finally became a doctor of medicine.
In the medical world, she's still considered a bit crazy. She doesn't care. We're living in those crazy post-war years, and Suzanne wears a cloche hat with the words "Je veux voter" ("I want to vote") written on it. She moved into a comfortable apartment near the Champ-de-Mars, where she operated on not only the faces but also the bodies of women who were freeing themselves from the corset. She reshaped sagging breasts, tightened tummies damaged by pregnancy, invented abdominal fat suction (the forerunner of liposuction) and reshaped buttocks.
She touched on everything, except the nose:
- The nose is the signature of the personality, you mustn't touch it! she proclaims.
Suzanne is convinced that surgery can help to emancipate women. Her clients? Artists, fashion house directors, journalists, lawyers, all those women of power who must obey the new imperatives of a slimming figure and permanent youthfulness... She charges the rich to treat free of charge those who are obliged to work, sales assistants, secretaries, dismissed because they are too old or too ugly. She advised her patients not to tell their husbands about the operations, and was already worried about those who were neurotically striving for physical perfection.
Such was Suzanne Noël, the great pioneer of cosmetic surgery, who fought for women's happiness but also fought to give back a face to men whose faces had been shattered by war.
In a twist of fate, she herself surrendered her arms on November 11 1954, the day when the whole of France commemorated the memories of the Great War.

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