Derived from the Greek word “plastiko” which means to fold or to give form, the origins of plastic surgery could be traced to even before plastic was invented. The father of modern plastic surgery, Sir Harold Gillies, developed many techniques of modern facial surgery to treat soldiers who suffered facial disfigurements during the First World War. Here we salute the people who were the world’s first to go under the scalpel. 1. Walter Yeo – first patient of plastic surgery Warrant officer Walter Yeo from Plymouth is thought to be the first patient of plastic surgery, and was treated by Sir Harold Gillies in 1917 with a new technique known as ‘tubed pedical” which saved him from total disfigurement. While manning the guns aboard HMS Warspite in 1916, the British sailor had suffered severe facial injuries including the loss of upper and lower eyelids. With a ‘mask’ of skin grafted across his face and eyes, he was given new eyelids. 2. William M. Spreckley – the first nose job recorded The case of William M Spreckley, a World War 1 soldier, was hailed as one of the first nose jobs recorded in the history of plastic surgery. Spreckley, 33, sustained a “gunshot wound nose” in the Battle of Ypres and became a patient of Dr Gillies, whose idea was to marry cosmetic appearance and function, implanted a section of cartilage from one of the patient’s ribs under his forehead. Then he "swung" the cartilage and a flap of skin into the nasal cavity to create a new nose. Though Spreckley's physical scars gradually became less visible, the psychological wounds remain and according to his granddaughter, “he must have felt like a freak when it happened. All his life he still thought he looked hideous.” 3. Timmie Jean Lindsey - the first woman with breast implants Timmie Jean Lindsey, a Texan housewife, was one of those women whom men would not turn for a second glance. In 1962, she became the first woman to receive silicone breast implants. A plastic surgery professor, Dr Gerow who was working with a colleague, Dr Thomas Cronin, on developing an implant for sagging breasts, had convinced her to be a guinea pig of his new trial. "Maybe I had started sagging, but I had not thought it was anything to fret about," she said. "But when they took off the bandages after ten days, my breasts looked beautiful. When I had the implants put in, I would get wolf whistles when I walked down the street.” 4. Willie Vicarage – the first man for radical reconstruction Suffering heavy facial wounds while participating in the Battle of Jutland in 1916, Willie Vicarage was one of the first men to receive facial reconstruction through the technique “walking-stalk skin flap” designed by Dr Harold Gillies. The surgeon had invented the “tubed pedicle” where he notched a wounded skin on the chest and back and “swung’ it into place over the face. The flap was stitched into a tube which kept the original blood supply intact. It also helped to reduce infection as antibiotics had not yet been invented then. 5. Mademoiselle Geoffre – the first liposuction patient Mademoiselle Geoffre, a young model and French ballet dancer was the first to go under the knife for liposuction. The procedure was performed by highly qualified French surgeon Charles Dujarier in 1926. She had sought to improve the looks of her legs. However, the operation failed; the lady suffered gangrene and her operated leg had to be amputated. She sued the doctor for 200,000 francs compensation. The doctor went to jail for performing an outlawed surgery but two years later, Dujarier's case was considered licit on condition that he obtained informed consent from the patient. However, Geoffre died shortly during the second trial. 6. Isabelle Dinoire – the first to get a partial face transplant Isabelle Dinoire from France lost her facial features in 2005 after being ripped by her black Labrador Retriever. However, a team lead by Professor Bernard Duvauchelle, an oral and maxillofacial surgeon, and Jean-Michel Dubernard succeeded in a 15-hour ground-breaking operation to give her a new nose, mouth and chin. Professor Dubernard said, “Once I had seen Isabelle's disfigured face, no more needed to be said. I was convinced something had to be done for this patient.” They had grafted a triangle of face tissue from a brain-dead woman’s nose and mouth onto Dinoire who felt that “it takes an awful lot of time to get used to someone else's face.” The 49-year-old lady succumbed to two types of cancer this summer. In 2010, the world’s first ‘full’ face transplant took place in Spain when a man, wounded while shooting, had a new set of features. Source
