A History of Plastic Surgery

  • Paolo Santoni-Rugiu &
  • Philip Sykes
Springer: 2007

According to legend, the fourth-century twin martyrs Cosmas and Damian, patron saints of physicians, successfully transplanted a leg from a black donor to a white recipient — a surgical triumph depicted 11 centuries later in this German painting. The discarded white limb on the floor is among the least graphic casualties in A History of Plastic Surgery by Paolo Santoni-Rugiu and Philip Sykes (Springer, 2007).

The volume's 400 or so figures are testament to three millennia of piecing body parts together and reconstructing or correcting them for functional or cosmetic purposes. The authors have scrutinized rare ancient texts and drawings to gain insight into early medical practices, including the crucial adjuncts of anaesthesia, blood transfusion and treatment of infection, some of which survived for thousands of years.

The Greeks, the Romans, the Arabs, the Renaissance, and battlefields galore, contributed to advances in plastic surgery.

Credit: WÜRTTEMBERGISCHES LANDESMUSEUM, STUTTGART

The authors' final figure is intended to give the reader “something to smile about”. It charts abdominoplasty techniques from 1948 — depicting darkly comical stout stomachs and pendulous abdomens.