ABSTRACT
After World War I, Suzanne’s professional specialty was primarily as a cosmetic surgeon, in that she operated on otherwise healthy bodies in order to enhance them aesthetically, but she still occasionally operated on patients who needed reconstructive surgery, often for free, especially children who had birth defects. But it was her work as a cosmetic surgeon that constituted the majority of her income, and by 1926, Suzanne’s practice was thriving. Unable to practice medicine in her small apartment on rue Charles Floquet (Figure 6.1), she maintained her private clinic on rue Marbeuf for several years, performing surgeries such as temporal-frontal face-lifting and eyelid “rejuvenations.” 1 As her operations became more sophisticated, however, her clients often required general anesthesia and extensive post-operative care that could not be provided in her Marbeuf clinic, and by the mid-1930s she had moved her practice to the private and prestigious Clinique des Bleuets. 2 On the upper end of rue République, the clinic provided Suzanne with surgical suites in which she could undertake more intense procedures that required extensive undermining and serious resectioning of fatty tissue. Undermining during a face-lift requires precise gauging of how much skin will be lifted away from the face in order for removal, 3 and Suzanne experimented for years on undermining techniques along with methods that improved operations for reshaping of the buttocks and thighs, abdominoplasty, blepharoplasty, mammoplasty, rhytidoplasty, and defatting of the arms and legs.
