History of Cosmetic Surgery

The ancient Greeks and Romans have been credited with performing some of the first, albeit basic, plastic surgery operations. They were known for repair type procedures for battle wounds done out of military necessity. While this seems a far cry from modern day aesthetic surgery, it has also been found that there is evidence of rhinoplasty in India from the same and earlier periods. Cosmetic surgery has a long and extensive history around the world, even if modern cosmetic surgery is only recently surging in popularity.

There are definitely more operations done because of vanity, because a person wants to look a certain way, than because they need to have something fixed that has gone wrong. Even so, many of the techniques used in modern cosmetic surgery, particularly facial surgery, were borne of military necessity on the field of battle as far back as WWI. The situations that arose in these battlefield procedures could be quite dire, and prompted a good bit of experimentation because - as harsh as it is - there was sometimes little to be lost from the attempts. Reconstructive surgery and skin grafting techniques grew in leaps and bounds during this period.

There is a famous British sailor who is known as the first person to have benefited from plastic surgery, though that title is admittedly a little dubious. Scarred and injured in battle in 1916, Walter Yeo had major damage done to both his eyes and mouth. His injuries were covered by a skin graft over his eyes and mouth. It was not attractive but it was functional.

Now it takes much less convincing to have a procedure done. There is a certain obsession with cosmetic surgery in the US and the Western World, and it is reaching greater and greater heights every year. In 2011, in the US alone, there were 1,638,524 surgical cosmetic procedures (according to the American Society of Aesthetic Plastic Surgery). This is roughly double what it was about ten years prior. The number is climbing, still.

In the future I believe that we will continue to see more and more plastic surgery as it becomes more common throughout the generations. When children think that it is normal for their mother to have a lift at 45 and their dad to have calf implants, they'll think nothing of doing the same and maybe more when they are grown. And that process will repeat exponentially throughout generations - not to mention that procedures will inevitably come down in price as technology and technical skill of the industry increases.

The most common operations now are breast implants, chin implants, facelifts, and liposuction. While plastic surgery gets bigger and bigger in popularity, people consider their alternatives less and they are perhaps more eager to get a surgical operation. It remains to be seen whether this will truly be in the best interest of our culture or not.