Georges Burou (6 September 1910 – 17 December 1987) was a French gynecologist who managed a clinic[1] in Casablanca, Morocco, and is widely credited with innovating modern sex reassignment surgery for trans women.
[1] From early 1943 onward Burou first served as a second lieutenant in the French Expeditionary Corps and eventually left North Africa as a military surgeon of the 2nd Moroccan Mountain Division to actively join battle at the French island of Corsica and the Italian river Garigliano and mountain of Cassino.
[1] Together with New Zealand and Indian troops, his division forced through the German Gustav Line at Cassino on May 13, 1944, the turning point in the liberation of Italy, and lost 1120 men in the process.
[1] After the liberation of Rome, Venice, and Siena, Burou landed at Cassis for the Allied campaigns in the Provence, the Alps, the Vosges, and Alsace.
[1] Burou operated his sex reassignment clinic, called "Clinique du Parc", in Casablanca and in 1973 reported his experience with over 3000 individual cases.
[6][7][8] Between 1956 and 1958 Burou independently developed the anteriorly pedicled penile skin flap inversion vaginoplasty in his clinic.
[1] Burou's wife, Jeanne ("Nanou") Boisvert, named rooms in the clinic after different flowers, each hand-painted on small frames on the doors.
"[10] Contact with the outside world was initially discouraged for patients during the early days of their recovery from sex reassignment surgery.
[1][4] Burou later confirmed that he did not ask his patients too many questions, but sought to fulfill their wishes, and that he did restrict his services to trans women with a distinct "feminine" appearance or character.
[1] Morris, who was one of Burou's most prominent trans female patients, recalled in her memoir Conundrum that he would do his rounds twice daily "dressed for the corniche and looking in general pretty devastating.
"[13] Morris recalled that he would sit at the end of her bed "and chat desultorily of this and that, type a few very slow words on [her] typewriter, read a headline from The Times in a delectable Maurice Chevalier accent, and eventually take an infinitely gentle look at his handiwork.
[1] The surgical field was widened by retracting the scrotal skin on both sides and widely exposing the corpus spongiosum, both corpora cavernosa, and the two testes.
[1] A drain was left in the posterior commissure and, finally, excess scrotal skin was resected to obtain a good appearance of the major labia.
[1][15] In 1975 one patient addressed Burou, requesting his services, and received a prompt reply that detailed the cost of sex-reassignment surgery at US$5,000 "payable in cash upon arrival, if possible in travellers cheques.
[1] A devoted sportsman, Burou loved all nautical sports, as well as golf, was a "fierce" windsurfer, and was among the first to cross the Strait of Gibraltar on water skis.
[1] On the morning of Sunday, 8 November 1942, while treating French sailors in the schoolyard of École de la Fonçiere at Rue de l’Horloge (later named Rue N’Chakra Rahal) after the arrival of United States Marine Corps in Casablanca, Burou was nearly killed by a 10 kg (22 lb) piece of shell.
[1] In 1950 Burou and his family moved to 71 Avenue d’Amade, situated across from Casablanca's main park, now called Parc de la Ligue-Arabe.
[1] Burou and his wife built the Clinique du Parc on Rue Lapébie, the backstreet that ran parallel to the prestigious avenue.