Decapitation? No Problem. The Magic of Restoration: Ancient Myths and Practices of Plastic Surgery
Plastic surgery, not just a modern practice, has always existed and was shrouded in mystery, magic, and eroticism.
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 in the 6th Century BCE. 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.
Ancient Surgery (CC BY-SA 4.0)
