It turns out that rhinoplasty and breast augmentation are not modern trends, they were done by your great-grandmothers.
Nowadays, plastic surgery is incredibly popular. At least once a day we hear from our friends or colleagues that someone has had plastic surgery. But we are sure that you have not even thought about how long ago it appeared and with what operations it all began. We asked a plastic surgeon about the history of plastic surgery and what it was in the 1920s – 1930s.
Candidate of Medical Sciences, Leading Physician, Plastic Surgeon at the Time of Beauty Clinic of Aesthetic Medicine.
Before talking about the beginning of the 1800th century, let’s look a little earlier. Plastic surgery in the modern sense dates back to the XNUMXs. It was then that surgeons managed to develop antiseptic agents that allowed doctors to transplant skin and other tissues. Many people have wanted to undergo plastic surgery in order to gain a sense of happiness along with a change in appearance.
Rhinoplasty examples from the 1920s
Considering that this is the end of the First World War, plastic surgery was mainly of the restorative and reconstructive type. The patients were war veterans with various degrees of burns, facial wounds and eye injuries. Then there was no such arsenal of threads, implants, and all procedures were carried out with a high degree of risk. There was even a military field surgery, where doctors without any conditions transplanted skin, reconstructed the face, installed glass implants in the eyes.
In the 20s, plastic surgery was a necessity, not a whim. Healthy people rarely applied for beauty, the main patients are people with congenital and acquired defects. So, in 1920, Dr. Harold Gillis performed the world’s first operation to eliminate lop-earedness. And he began to restore the auricle using the cartilage from the rib. Later he was nicknamed the father of plastic surgery.
Closer to the 30s, life began to improve, and people had secondary needs – to improve their appearance in accordance with the canons and standards of beauty. And surgery, which was considered more male, took on a female form. By this time, surgeons had successfully implanted fat from other parts of the body into the chest. It was during this period that surgeons began to make chiseled noses in the Monroe style – a sharp, slightly upturned tip, a thin back.
Increasingly, the fair sex turned to clinics for a facelift, which was done by excising excess skin and applying a suture along the hair growth or behind the auricle. The first such operation took place in 1931 at the New York City hotel, they demonstrated the process of the operation on the actress Martha Petel.
A facelift with threads was also done at that time, only thin horsehair was used instead. It was a boom of Hollywood stars who now and then went under the surgeon’s knife to enlarge their lips, highlight cheekbones and change the shape of the eyes.
It is generally accepted that everything was different in the USSR, but this wave did not pass us by either. Despite the announced reasonable prices, it was almost impossible for an ordinary person to get to the leading surgeons. The lists for the beauty operation included politicians, the wives of the first secretaries and chairmen. By the way, the officials themselves did not stand aside, doing liposuction and facelifts.
By the way, it was during this period that the first sex reassignment surgeries began to be performed. The operation took place in Berlin at the Institute for Sexual Sciences.