Laudatio for a Friend

Dear Jacques I was quite surprised to get the message of your passing.

Last year 2024 November we had lunch the two of us at the congress hotel in Catania at the Mediterranean Congress of Endoscopy just before the session in your honour where Arnaud Wattiez and Giuseppe Ettore did congratulate you with a life time achievement award. During lunch you told me that you were not feeling well since some time and that you could not define the cause. When I asked your wife, Claire, she said she was aware but did not know what the reason was. Your hearing was diminished but that I knew and as you refused to wear hearing aids conversation sometimes did become difficult. I did remark that you were getting thinner but otherwise you were your own self as always. However, your attitude was very different from a few months before when we did meet in Algiers for ANGOL where you did ask me to take some pictures with your phone telling me you did not have pictures when lecturing. You took some 45 min where you were supposed to take twenty because you explained that otherwise “the audience would not understand”. Surprisingly, Amal Drizi, the session president, did not even notice, absorbed as she was in your words, as was the entire audience.

Texting on the spot to Luca Mencaglia the answer was “Jacques will never change”! How right he was from the moment I did get to know you this was your concern: “Will the audience understand what I want to communicate”.  So, you took your time. How could I know that there was so little time left. If I would have known, there were still so many questions I would have liked to ask you even after all these years. You would have patiently answered with precision as you always did. What I did not understand is that you still did have problems with the buttons on your computer even that last time in Catania making for me and Arnaud to come on stage to try and get your lecture running.

Jacques Hamou the polytechnicien before becoming the outstanding gynaecological hysteroscopic surgeon you have always been. I remember Professor Salat-Baroux asking you in 1978 to develop a hysteroscope to look into the uterine cavity with some enhancement of the vision to monitor the retraction of the catheters used at tubal microsurgery. You, in one year, did develop your Hamou I hysteroscope together with “father”, as we did call him, Karl Storz. I still have one in my den. You later did develop your Hamou Endomat as you did realise that CO2 as distention medium was difficult to use and not really adapted to hysteroscopy without anaesthesia. All of the later realisations together with Frau Sybil Storz who had taken over at Karl Storz GmBH.

Your book “Hysteroscopie et Microcolposcopie – Atlas et Traité” Masson 1987 was an eye opener for so many of us. I see that mine has a mark of being bought in 1989. Here we did see the first appearance of the “Italian Job” friends like Prof Ettore Cittadini, our facilitator, Luca Mencaglia, Antonio Perino, Prof Gianfranco Scarselli, later president of the European Society of Hysteroscopy (ESH), and one stranger Prof Patrick J. Taylor the Canadian from the university of Calgary.

Your Hamou I did allow for enlargements up to x 150. I remember working together on publications concerning the reepithelization of the cervix where we could see the different cells in the outpatient by simple coloration of the cervix with your indispensable Waterman Blue ink. You are aware that Luigi Montevecchi is still using the technique in his daily practice and publishes on his findings.

Your optical engineering skills allowed you to play with the fore oblique lens of the scope so that a simple turning of the shaft – remaining in place – allowed for a full examination of the uterine cavity after a passage of the cervical canal without dilatation like we were used to perform after Hans-Joachim Lindeman, the uncrowned king of hysteroscopy, as we used to call him, the first president of the ESH.

Then the travelling started, you the technical expert, me and the many others the clinicians supporting your talks with our clinical cases. All over the world we did travel from Singapore over Asia, Europe and the USA. In the US where Jordan Philips did invite us to the AAGL. With Luca you did travel all over South America. In Moskow at Leila Adamyan’s hospital all of us did meet for lectures and surgeries. I remember Prof Barlow in Oxford England where we did go together to introduce hysteroscopic resectoscopy, myomectomy and endometrial resection. The Royal College did estimate that hysteroscopy was minor surgery and ruled that these surgeries had to be preformed by juniors. This way of approach, despite your warnings concerning fluid overload, did lead to some serious problems for patients pushing you to rethink the fluid distention by engineering your Endomat.

On these travels you always did remain the man faithful to his Jewish beliefs visiting the synagogue wherever we went on this earth. Personally, growing up as a non-Jewish half Italian youngster of Christian faith, in the Jewish quarter of Antwerp, I very much appreciated this, your attitude in life, my friend. Not that we did not engage in some naughty activities like that time with Prof René Friedman – the one and only who did supervise the conception and the birth of the first IVF baby in France – at his club in Paris, very much to the disapproval of Claire, causing us to leave in a hurry. We finally did come together at the “Diplôme Universitaires Hystéroscopie” in Paris first with René and Victor Gomel, at that time exchange professor out of Vancouver Canada, at the hôpital Antoine-Beclère in Clamart and later with Prof Hervé Fernandez at le Kremlin Bicêtrre. Luca and I however never understood how a genius like you could not find back his car after a dinner with friends. After you bought a new car, the police however did find back your car at the spot you did leave it. You were lucky that Luca and I were in the backseats of your car when Claire did tell you, very clearly in a not to be mistaken words, her thoughts on this affair. Vintage Jacques Hamou my friend I am afraid to have to say.

Rest in peace my friend you have deserved some rest after that very full life of yours. You will never be out of our minds our teacher.

Bruno J van Herendael