Wrinkles in Time: Uncovering the Early History of Cosmetic Plastic Surgery (1850-1890)

Abstract

The rich history of plastic surgery, rooted in ancient reconstructive traditions, tells a fascinating story of surgical inventiveness across centuries, from Sushruta to Dieffenbach and beyond. Yet, while the reconstructive lineage of the specialty is well documented, the origins of cosmetic surgery have remained far more obscure. Emerging only in the mid-19th century amid the social and economic transformations of the high industrial age, aesthetic procedures were seen as lacking therapeutic indications and were met with skepticism, ethical objections, and professional censure in the medical community. Consequently, the documented early history of cosmetic surgery lies scattered across disparate sources rather than in the sanctioned medical literature, resulting in an incomplete chronology of the specialty's emergence. In this special topic discussion, we present newly unearthed digitized medical and nonmedical documents, many previously unknown to the field, which directly attest to the "underground" appearance of purely cosmetic surgical procedures, particularly the rhytidoplasty, by as early as 1851. This glimpse into the specialty's past offers a rare opportunity to reconstruct its fragmented history and to examine how a once-marginalized practice gradually transitioned to legitimacy and professional recognition.

Abstract as indexed by PubMed; the article is open access (PubMed Central).