Everybody has looked in the mirror at some point in their lives and thought they could do with a smaller nose or fewer wrinkles. Almost 10 million operations were performed in 2014, according to the International Society of Aesthetic¹ Plastic Surgery. Eyelid² surgery topped the list of the five most popular procedures, which included breast augmentation and rhinoplasty.

 

We hear a lot about cosmetic³ surgery these days. But what many people may not realise is that reconstructing someone's face has an ancient past. There are reports of treatments to restore a broken nose in ancient Egyptian documents.

 

Considering that safe anaesthetics and antibiotics⁴ were only discovered in the 19th and 20th centuries, it was a truly painful and risky⁵ business to go under the knife in the past. But as far back as the mid-15th century nose jobs were carried out using skin taken from the upper arm.

 

Plastic surgery went through a revolution during World War One. The trenches⁶ protected the soldiers' bodies, but many who stuck their heads up were exposed to explosions. New techniques were developed by Harold Gillies who ran a ward⁷ at the Cambridge Military Hospital in Britain, and later a whole hospital dedicated⁸ to helping⁹ disfigured soldiers. Many wounded men at that time couldn't stand looking at their own faces. There were no mirrors in the hospital. In parks near the hospital, some benches were painted blue to signal to patients with facial injuries that they could sit there. And it was a way of telling local residents to prepare for the shock of seeing someone with a disfigured face.

 

Plastic surgery has come a long way since then. It reconstructs what does need reconstructing but it also makes people with no particular problems feel more confident. Bigger breasts? Straight nose? Facelift? In many cases, cosmetic surgery isn't a necessity at all, just a choice. But when done properly by capable doctors on patients who have a realistic goal, it's believed that plastic surgery can heal psychological wounds almost as much as physical ones.

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