26 May 2019

Women on Stamps | N for Noël


Suzanne Noël (1878-1954) was one of the first French plastic surgeons and an active feminist. She was also the founder of Soroptimist International of Europe.

On this 2018 stamp, she is presented during a facial reconstruction operation.

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For the current round of Sunday Stamps A-Z I am showing stamps dedicated to women. You can see here all the Women on Stamps featured on this blog.

Go to Sunday Stamps to enjoy more N-stamps.

11 comments:

  1. Clever use of the hands by the designer both to accentuate the skill and protect the squeamish viewer.

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    1. It is not usual to depict surgeons at work on stamps, I believe.

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  2. This image of her at work is far more powerful than just a profile of her face would be. Lovely stamp.

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  3. To see a surgeon at work is unusual I'm sure. Fine stamp.

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  4. An interesting stamp, beautifully designed!
    I first didn't notice that she is doing surgery because I'm missing the surgeon gloves (but maybe these didn't yet exist in her time?).
    And interesting to learn that she studied medicine before our Dutch pioneer Aletta Jacobs did. And I didn't know that plastic surgery already exists for so many years.
    Thank you for sharing!

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    1. I hadn't noticed that!
      I've read in the Wikipedia that surgical glvoes are used since 1894, and the first disposable gloves were made as late as in 1964. But maybe it took a while to generalise the use of gloves (or maybe they wanted to make a more dramatic drawing, I don't know).

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    2. In Spain, it was 1882 when the first women graduated in Medicine. Actually, there were three women, but one of them (Elena Maseras) never worked as a doctor and another one (Martina Castells) passed away before starting work. Only Dolors Aleu worked as a doctor. Three Catalan women, by the way. I don't think any of them have an stamp... :|

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  5. I agree, unusual to see a surgeon doing surgery on a stamp. And a pity the first female Spanish doctors have not been celebrated with a stamp.

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    Replies
    1. I hope it will change in the future. Maybe it's a sort of purplewashing, but finally we're getting some women on stamps (far from equality, still!).

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Thank you for coming. All your comments make me extremely happy.