Plastic surgery as a phenomenon is now known to almost every person on Earth. This medical procedure did not emerge in the 20th century, but much earlier in Egypt and India.
Throughout the history of medicine, there has not been a period when aesthetic operations were not practiced. In Egypt, at the time of the papyrus invention, which is 1600 BC. e., surgeons took care of the aesthetic aspects of their operations – this is evidenced by the surviving documents. There is even an assumption that the first aesthetic technologies appeared in 3000 BC, but there is no documentary evidence of this.
It is known that in India in 800 BC. e. have already done plastic surgery to correct the nose using the skin from the forehead or cheeks. In the records of Chinese doctors, there was information about an operation to correct the “cleft lip”, as well as procedures aimed at correcting the figure and appearance in general.
Until the 17th century, the success of Eastern surgery was more significant than European. In Europe, only a few cases of such practice were known. For example, in the 7th century AD in Alexandria, Paulos Aydzhinsky performed operations aimed at reducing the male breast, if it was large. This disease is called gynecomastia. Operations to reduce the size of male breasts are carried out in our time.
The liposuction method is now used to fight excess weight. But already in the 1st century A.D. this method of fighting obesity has been described in surviving documents from surgeons. During the Renaissance, plastic surgery was figured out as an independent branch of medicine, and was called “beauty surgery”. The treatise of 1597 by the Italian Gaspare Tagliacozzi on the restoration of damaged noses with the help of tissue fragments from the forearm has survived. Gaspare Tagliacozzi developed his own technique and successfully performed operations to restore the nose. As a result, he is now called the founder of plastic surgery in the modern sense. However, his contemporaries consider his actions criminal.
In the early 19th century, surgeons developed more sophisticated tools and techniques to transform human appearance. This was made possible by the proliferation of antiseptics. Humanity has learned to transplant skin, cartilage and other tissues. It so happened that the most terrible and tragic events of the 20th century contributed to the massive development of plastic surgery.
After the First World War in Europe, a huge number of affected people did not want to put up with the acquired disadvantages. More and more often, they addressed surgeons with requests to improve not only the function of a particular damaged body part, but also its appearance. Plastic surgeons have been leaders in the development of many unique techniques, including tissue grafts, microvessels, maxillofacial surgery and lipectomy techniques. One of the founders of plastic and reconstructive surgery is the famous Armenian-American surgeon Varazdat Gazandyan.
The development of skin grafting technologies after the Second World War and the emerging possibility of performing surgeries under local anesthesia made plastic surgeries even safer and, as a result, more widespread. There observed the evolution of cosmetic surgery, as well.