Mankind's essential nature entails self-improvement. Without the individual's pursuit of learning and enlightenment, peace with his or her neighbors and more efficient means to work, progress would stop. Because human beings have always sought self-fulfillment through self-improvement, plastic surgery -- improving and restoring form and function -- may be one of the world's oldest healing arts.

In fact, written evidence cites medical treatment for facial injuries more than 4,000 years ago. Physicians in ancient India were utilizing skin grafts for reconstructive work as early as 800 B.C.
However, progress in plastic surgery, like most of medicine, moved glacially for hundreds of years. It wasn't until the 19th and 20th Centuries that the specialty forged ahead both scientifically and within the medical establishment in both Europe and the United States.

America's first plastic surgeon of note was Dr. John Peter Mettauer, who was born in Virginia in 1787. The colorful Dr. Mettauer performed the first cleft palate operation in the New World in 1827 with instruments he designed himself.

For better or worse, the driving force behind most plastic surgery developments during the late 1800s and early 1900s was war, with the awful injuries it often inflicts on its participants. In fact, it was the "War to End All Wars," World War I, that catapulted plastic surgery into a new and higher realm.

Never before had physicians been required to treat so many and such extensive facial and head injuries. Shattered jaws, blown-off noses and lips and gaping skull wounds caused by modern weapons required innovative restorative procedures. Some of the best medical talent in Britain, France, Germany, Russia and Austria-Hungary devoted themselves to restoring the faces and lives of their countrymen during and after World War I. In the United States, plastic surgeons like Varaztad Kazanjian of Boston and Vilray Blair of St. Louis nobly served both their country, and humanity, in those years.

Aesthetic surgical procedures also developed during this period as physicians realized, as in the words of 19th Century American plastic surgeon John Orlando Roe, "how much valuable talent (had) been...buried from human eyes, lost to the world and society by reason of embarrassment...caused by the conscious, or in some cases, unconscious influence of some physical infirmity or deformity or unsightly blemish."

Despite the popular misconception, the word "plastic" in "plastic surgery" does not mean "artificial," but is derived from the ancient Greek work "plastikos," which means to mold or give form. Plastic surgery includes both the reconstructive and aesthetic subspecialties.
Despite the great leaps forward in plastic surgery after World War I, the profession was still rather ill-defined in the American medical establishment in the 1920s.

Physicians specializing in this area had no formal means to share their new knowledge and innovations with like-minded physicians across the country. What was needed was a professional organization.

* Two Founding Fathers:

Like most great American institutions, the American Society of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgeons (ASPRS) developed mainly through the sweat and toil of immigrants. In this case, it was two surgeons from Europe who came to the United States after World War I, Jacques Maliniac and Gustave Aufricht.

The two doctors were as unalike as any two men could be, except for their dedication to their craft. Despite his French-sounding name, Dr. Maliniac was born in 1889 in Warsaw. After studying with the leading plastic surgeons on the continent before the war, he was called into the Russian Army at the outbreak of hostilities. A small, intense man, Dr. Maliniac, who was Jewish, came to the United States in 1923 and decided to stay as anti-Semitism was on the rise in Europe in the 1920s. Settling in New York City in 1925, he opened a thriving private practice, and convinced the administrators of the City Hospital system to establish the first division of plastic surgery at a public hospital.
Dr. Aufricht, born in 1894, was a native of Budapest, Hungary. Like Dr. Maliniac, he treated wounded soldiers during the war, studied with the leading practitioners in Europe and arrived in New York in 1923. And like Dr. Maliniac, he was Jewish and decided to stay here when things became inhospitable in the Old World. However, the similarities ended there.

In the 1940s, many plastic surgeons served their country during the Second World War, and expanded plastic surgery procedures through the unique circumstances of treating wounded soldiers, sailors and airmen.

* THE 1950s:

Plastic surgery was fully integrated into the medical establishment by 1950. It next moved into the public consciousness. There was much good news to report to the American people in those post-war days. As with other areas of science and medicine, plastic surgery discoveries were happening at a break-neck pace, often derived frominnovations tested in the rear-area hospitals of Korea. Internal wiring for facial fractures, rotation flaps for skin deformities and a bevy of other new techniques were developed by plastic surgeons in the 1950s.

* THE 1960s:

As the 1960s began, plastic surgery became even more prominent in the minds of the American public .

* THE 1990s:

The 1990s began on a high note of growth, cooperation and continued innovations in the field of plastic surgery. More than 5,000 board-certified plastic surgeons were active in the United States. Many were engaged in research or volunteered in their communities or overseas.

Future Challenges:

The other great challenge of the 1990s has been health care reform. The plastic surgeons have been active in advocating coverage for reconstructive procedures in any new health plan and ensuring patient choice and access to specialists.

Meanwhile, plastic surgeons push ahead with innovations, improving current techniques and discovering new ones. Researchers are now trying to unlock the secrets of the growth-factor environment of the womb, where scarless healing takes place, and apply it to wounds in children and adults.

One of the Major Innoventions in Plastic Sugery these last years are:
BOTOX, Mesotherapy, Facial Rejuvenation Techniques, Scarless Lifting, ?