History



Walter Yeo, a British soldier, is often cited as the first known person to have benefited from plastic surgery. The photograph shows him before the procedure (left) and after (right) receiving a skin flap surgery performed by Sir Harold Gillies in 
Reconstructive surgery techniques were being carried out in India by 800 BC.[3] Sushruta, the father of Surgery,[4] made important contributions to the field of plastic and cataract surgery in 6th century BC.[4] The medical works of both Sushruta and Charak originally in Sanskrit were translated into Arabic language during the Abbasid Caliphate in 750 AD.[5] The Arabic translations made their way into Europe via intermediaries.[5] In Italy the Branca family[6] of Sicily and Gaspare Tagliacozzi (Bologna) became familiar with the techniques of Sushruta.[5]
British physicians traveled to India to see rhinoplasties being performed by native methods.[7] Reports on Indian rhinoplasty performed by a Kumhar vaidya were published in the Gentleman's Magazine by 1794.[7] Joseph Constantine Carpue spent 20 years in India studying local plastic surgery methods.[7] Carpue was able to perform the first major surgery in the Western world by 1815.[8] Instruments described in the Sushruta Samhita were further modified in the Western world.[8]



Up until the techniques of anesthesia became established, surgeries involving healthy tissues involved great pain. Infection from surgery was reduced by the introduction of sterile techniques and disinfectants. The invention and use of antibiotics, beginning with sulfa drugs and penicillin, was another step in making elective surgery possible.
In 1792, Chopart performed operative procedure on a lip using a flap from the neck. In 1814, Joseph Carpue successfully performed operative procedure on a British military officer who had lost his nose to the toxic effects of mercury treatments. In 1818, German surgeon Carl Ferdinand von Graefe published his major work entitled Rhinoplastik. Von Graefe modified the Italian method using a free skin graft from the arm instead of the original delayed pedicle flap.
The first American plastic surgeon was John Peter Mettauer, who, in 1827, performed the first cleft palate operation with instruments that he designed himself. In 1845, Johann Friedrich Dieffenbach wrote a comprehensive text on rhinoplasty, entitled Operative Chirurgie, and introduced the concept of reoperation to improve the cosmetic appearance of the reconstructed nose.
In 1891, American otorhinolaryngologist John Roe presented an example of his work, a young woman on whom he reduced a dorsal nasal hump for cosmetic indications. In 1892, Robert Weir experimented unsuccessfully with xenografts (duck sternum) in the reconstruction of sunken noses. In 1896, James Israel, a urological surgeon from Germany, and in 1889 George Monks of the United States each described the successful use of heterogeneous free-bone grafting to reconstruct saddle nose defects. In 1898, Jacques Joseph, the German orthopaedic-trained surgeon, published his first account of reduction rhinoplasty. In 1928, Jacques Joseph published Nasenplastik und Sonstige Gesichtsplastik.

 20th century

In World War I, a New Zealand otolaryngologist working in London, Harold Gillies developed many of the techniques of modern facial surgery in caring for soldiers suffering from disfiguring facial injuries. Kazanjian and Blair, two men hired for plastic surgery by the United States army, learned from Gillies in England.[11] His work was expanded upon during World War II by his cousin and former student Archibald McIndoe, who pioneered treatments for RAF aircrew suffering from severe burns. McIndoe's radical, experimental treatments, led to the formation of the Guinea Pig Club. In 1946, Gillies carried out the first female-to-male sex reassignment surgery.