ABSTRACT
Although techniques for surgically altering the appearance of the human body have been available for centuries, the development of the field has, nevertheless, been slow. This is hardly surprising. The emer gence of plastic surgery is linked to the development of medicine as well as to changing cultural notions about the alteration of the body. Prior to 1846 when ether and chloroform were discovered, surgery had to be done without anesthesia. Surgeries done under these condi tions would have inevitably been traumatic for the patient and probably for the physician as well. If patients did not die from shock or loss of blood, the chance that they would perish from infection was imminent. Before the discovery of antisepsis in 1867, it is a wonder that patients managed to survive surgery at all.1
