Which country did plastic surgery originate in?
Sometimes when we look at ourselves in the mirror, we wish if we looked a little different, maybe with a sharper nose or minus that odd mark on the right ear left behind by a stitched-up wound from your childhood magically disappeared. To make all of the above and much more possible, science found a solution many centuries ago: Plastic surgery. No, it’s not a thing of the modern times, and was invented long time ago. Infact, plastic surgery has its roots in India.
By the way, just for your information, plastic surgery has nothing to do with plastic. Then why is it called plastic surgery? Actually, the word plastic means "reshaping or molding" in Greek. And that’s how it derives its name. Let’s understand how plastic surgery developed and evolved.
Origin of plastic surgery
The oldest-known procedures (and we are not saying plastic surgeries) are recorded in an ancient Egyptian medical text called the "Edwin Smith Papyrus", thought to be an early trauma surgery textbook. It is named after the American Egyptologist, Edwin Smith. While showing how the Egyptians treated wounds and bone fractures, the papyrus revealed a suggested fix for nasal injuries such as molding the nose into the desired position before using wooden splints, swabs, etc to hold it in place. Whether or not these procedures could actually be called plastic surgery is an age-old debate.
It was actually in India, that historians found the first instances of reconstructive surgeries (such as nose jobs and reshaping) as early as 800 BC. This is evident from a detailed compendium called "Sushruta Samhita”, written by the Indian physician Sushruta around that time. Known as the father of plastic surgery, he has outlined a remarkably advanced technique for skin grafts in the compendium. By 750 AD, the medical works of both Sushruta and Charaka (who is known as the father of medicine), originally in Sanskrit, were being translated into the Arabic language and sent to Europe.
Evolution of plastic surgery since World War I
As these works got circulated in Europe, more physicians got interested. Joseph Carpue, a surgeon in England, was one of them. When he learned about procedures developed in India to rebuild noses, he travelled to India and spent 20 years studying special plastic surgery methods. Thanks to that knowledge, Carpue was able to perform his first major surgery in the Western world by 1815. But there were many challenges. For example, there was no anaesthesia and therefore, the surgeries involved high risk.
It wasn’t until World War I (1914) that plastic surgery was taken seriously. World war I added a huge number of patients with facial and other kinds of injuries to allow doctors to experiment with innovative new techniques and bringing advancements in processes. At that time, Harold Gillies, a British surgeon, who is considered to be the father of modern plastic surgery was working to repair the faces of war veterans and was at the epicentre of this flourishing field. The most significant improvements in the field of plastic surgery occurred during the war training doctors to handle more complex procedures.
Plastic surgery in the post-war era
The post-war period saw significant scientific developments – the technology had improved immensely, there was a lower risk because of the advent of anaesthesia, silicone was a newly created substance and a staple of various cosmetic procedures and people had more disposable income to spend. All that contributed to the growing popularity of plastic surgery. But cosmetic procedures were still looked down upon as a non-serious business.
Though slowly things were changing in the western world with more awareness about cosmetic procedures, it wasn’t until the 1990s that they received some serious attention. In the 1990s, the volume of procedures in America and worldwide grew manyfold, and cosmetic procedures began to outnumber reconstructive ones.
A fast forward to the current day, plastic surgery has become a go-to thing for almost anything. You are not liking your lips, you have a weight issue, you are not happy with your cheeks or chest size, so go change it. It can solve almost all your problems in life. How wonderful is that!