Scar Removals and Breast Reductions: Graeco-Roman Practices of Plastic Surgery

In the 6th Century BCE, an Indian physician named Sushruta, who was widely regarded in India as the “father of surgery”, wrote one of the world’s earliest works on medicine and surgery. The work included the method of skin grafting, which entail transplanting pieces of skin from one part of the body to another. His treatise also provides the first written record of a forehead flap rhinoplasty, a technique still used today, in which a full-thickness piece of skin from the forehead is used to reconstruct a nose. However, Sushruta was not the first inventor of plastic surgery. The first known record of plastic surgery was in 1213 BCE, when ancient Egyptians tried to preserve the nose of their dead king by surgically inserting bones and seeds into it.

For centuries, tribes would stretch their earlobes, bind their feet, file their teeth, as well as tattoo and scar their skin – these practices have not lost their cultural powers. Plastic surgery gained momentum and sophistication during the lifetime of the ancient Roman physician Galen (129-216 CE) due to increased obsession with the human body. Galen himself attempted to cure eyes that squinted and drooped. He also performed aesthetic rhinoplasty on wealthy men and women who simply wanted a new nose. However, after the fall of Rome, many of Galen’s medical texts were lost – only 20 out of his 600 books survive – and the practice of plastic surgery was in decline. In the Middle Ages, despite discussions of proper dental care, surgery in general was deemed to be pagan and sinful because the spilling of blood by a surgeon and the power he held over the body were akin to magic. Plastic surgery, therefore, has always existed and was shrouded in mystery, magic, and eroticism.