Origins
Plastic surgery is probably the oldest known form of medical practice. Its origin traces back to the beginning of mankind : the first men, victims of tribal wars and various traumas, tried very soon to repair the outcomes of their wounds and to correct the ungraceful difformities resulting from accidents and from all sorts of mutilations : around 600 B. C. the Indians were able to reconstruct a mutilated nose using a frontal skin flap.
Still nowadays many “primitive” tribes are fine experts in the art of elongating limbs or necks, expanding skin or enhancing skin scarring.
After WW2 plastic surgery improved incredibly quickly : thanks to the works of many French, German and Anglo-American pioneers and major advances in anaesthesiological techniques, reconstructive and aesthetic surgery realized paramount progresses.
General surgeons long considered plastic surgery as a minor field only dealing with skin problems. It is now a fully respected specialty working in association with all the other medical specialties. Plastic surgery is implicated in complex reconstruction cases after traumas, burns, cancers or even after difficult pregnancies.
Since two or three decades plastic surgery meets an incredibly rising interest in the audience thanks to the medias. Thence aesthetic surgery became more popular and tends to be no longer limited to wealthy people.
