"T'ai-je dit comment, au dernier courrier j'ai expédié au Mercure un article sur Gauguin, article ponctué des vagissements d'une cliente que j'accouchais, et expédié au dernier moment au paquebot par le mari affolé ?"

Autograph double letter from Victor Segalen to Emile Mignard. Two pages written in black ink on two leaves. Horizontal folds from mailing, scattered foxing.
Emile Mignard (1878-1966), also a physician from Brest, was one of Segalen’s closest childhood friends, whom he first met at the Jesuit Collège Notre-Dame-de-Bon-Secours in Brest. The writer maintained with him a prolific and sustained correspondence in which he described, with humor and intimacy, his daily life across the globe. It was at Mignard’s wedding, on 15 February 1905, that Segalen met his future wife, Yvonne Hébert.

Returning from a medical tour of the Gambier and Pomotou Islands, Segalen was back in Papeete, where he devoted most of his time to surgery: "By force of circumstances, I found myself the only doctor on the island with any surgical training (my last two months in Toulon), so that from the outset my hesitations disappeared. Since no one else was willing to operate, I did so, at first for lack of others, now because I enjoy it, and because I have had the benefit of a few lucky and successful cases. [...] Little by little, then, I set to it, and now I have a small clinic of my own, my operating room at home! and – without pride – I am sent the difficult cases (!)",This intense practice of medicine reveals some of the racial prejudices characteristic of the period: "I must state first of all that the native or even half-white population provides the ideal ground for bloody operations, by virtue of their particular aptitude for healing surgical wounds, even septic ones." Segalen then goes on at length, and in detail, about the operations he was called upon to perform: "In this way I have operated, with the help of my colleagues, or assisting them closely: a strangulated hernia in a half-white man of 50, cured; removal of numerous suspicious lymph nodes (cured), of lipomas, of occupational serous bursae, an orbital osteosarcoma that naturally recurs, a cured popliteal fossa lipoma, a cataract (uncertain result), a huge abscess of the abdominal wall..." The most substantial account remains that of a urological procedure: "...and finally took part in the removal of an elephantine scrotal tumor of 30 kg. The operation was carried out at my home, with my equipment, by the newly arrived doctor for the Gambier. A new sheath was made for the penis and a new scrotum; <em>four hours</em> of work until the last suture, which is progressing well.",

Despite the relentless rhythm of consultations, the writer did not neglect his literary endeavors and the creation of his Immémoriaux: "Amid all this, inevitably my literary projects stall somewhat. At first I tried to set aside my mornings for ‘writing’, the thankless task of fixing the Imaginary, <em>of realizing</em>; I would turn out five or six pages; but this had to be preceded by a nocturnal gestation that leaned towards surgical times; I am counting on twelve days in the Leeward Islands to make progress. I have two chapters completed.",

 The work would eventually appear in 1907 at the Mercure de France under the pseudonym Max-Anély (Max in homage to Max Prat, and Anély, one of his wife’s given names), Segalen, as a military physician, not being authorized to sign a work of fiction with his own name.
The letter also reveals that the article on Gauguin requested by Saint-Pol-Roux (letter of 15 October 1903 (« Oh dites-nous quelque chose sur ce malheureux de la Destinée qui fut souvent un grand artiste, et à sa manière un Maître. Comment se fait-il que vous n'ayez pas adressé quelque relation sur cette mort au Mercure de France qui l'eût accueillie avec enthousiasme ? ... ») had at last been dispatched to France in extraordinary circumstances:    "Have I told you how, in the last mail, I sent off to the <em>Mercure</em> an article on Gauguin, an article punctuated by the cries of a patient I was delivering, and dispatched at the last moment to the steamer by the distraught husband?"An apologetic article entitled “Gauguin dans son dernier décor” was indeed published in June 1904 in the Mercure de France. Segalen describes there the painter’s final days in his Maison du Jouir.
This burden of literary and medical work also had the effect of tempering Segalen’s sexual appetites: "Sexually: stabilized for a time. The sexual act bores me, it takes too much time; besides, those who truly attract me, I prefer them as friends rather than mistresses; and as they are very complete friends, quite yielding in the evenings in the groves near their houses, this spares me, on returning home, from needing other caresses."