History of Plastic Surgery – From Egypt to World Wars to the Present
The origins and history of Plastic Surgery become evoked in my mind every time a patient asks the question during a consult…….’now where is the plastic going?’ Some patients erroneously assume that the name, Plastic Surgery, involves doing part of the operation with a piece of plastic. (ironically, that is true when breast and facial implants are inserted) However, plastic as a material is a relatively recent invention from the 1940s, and other than some breast and facial surgeries, is not used in the vast majority of plastic surgery procedures.
Plastic surgery, however, as a practiced part of medicine has a much older history and derives its name from the Greek word, Plastikos, meaning to mold or shape. Plastic Surgery has long been associated with the reconstruction or alteration of face and body parts, regardless of whether the surgery was being performed in cases of injury, birth defects, cancer, or for cosmetic reasons.
Many attribute the development of plastic surgery to the days of trench warfare in World War I. During that war, a large number of mutilating injuries occurred, particularly of the face, by looking up over the top of the trench in the midst of battle. As a result, many complex face and body reconstructions were performed by a variety of surgeons from many different disciplines who were learning the early art of plastic surgery.
However, this view is not entirely accurate as plastic operations were described in the earliest Indian and Egyptian records. Even in the early part of the Christian era, records of plastic surgery work were written. The most noteworthy historic event in plastic surgery occurred in the middle of the fifteenth century when a Sicilian surgeon rebuilt a lost nose from an arm and published the first plastic surgery text in 1597. The impact of this history is felt today as the image of that event is used by one of the plastic surgery societies as their logo.
I think of this every time I hear that famous plastic surgery question……..but I simply say……we won’t use any plastic material to fix your problem!
Dr Barry Eppley
Indianapolis, Indiana