Wednesday, September 14, 2011

What’s Old Is New (and Sometimes Fake)

By Supriya Savkoor

It’s 3,000 years ago, and you decide you would like a new nose. Where would you go to get one? If you guessed the holy city of Benares in India, on the banks of the Ganges river, you'd be right. That's where the great sages prayed, and Hindus, Buddhists, and Jains pilgrimaged—and yes, sometimes got nose jobs.

It’s true. Back then, you could could have gotten a nose job or almost any other kind of cosmetic surgery in Benares (now called Varanasi), as well as had your hernia fixed, a caesarian, cataract replacement, prostrate removal, tonsillectomy, or a root canal.

That’s because Sushruta, often credited as the Father of Surgery and also the Father of Plastic Surgery, was from Varanasi, where he taught, practiced, and wrote a seminal series, the Sushruta Samhita, on the art and science of surgery sometime between 800 B.C and 300 B.C. With 184 whopping chapters, Suchruta’s compendium is exhaustive. He described more than 300 surgical procedures and 120 surgical instruments and classifies human surgery into eight categories. He detailed not only surgery but geriatrics, pediatrics, obstetrics, fetal development, psychiatry, and ear, nose, throat, and eye conditions. Overall, he classified some 1,120 illnesses and diseases, as well as 700 medicinal plants and 100 medicines prepared from both plant and animal extracts. And he explained how to examine, diagnose, treat, and give a prognosis on many illnesses and diseases.

In the surgery field alone, Sushruta created tools and techniques to make incisions, conduct probes and extractions, cauterize a wound, perform amputations, pull teeth, and drain fluids. He categorized in great detail the different ways bones dislocate and fracture and even how to measure and fit artificial limbs. He successfully used ant heads to stitch up intestines.The ants would bite into the wounds and act as clips, then Sushruta would twist their bodies off, leaving the heads intact to keep the wounds sealed. Bizarre, maybe, but it worked.

Perhaps most notably, he and his students reconstructed noses, genitalia, earlobes, and other body parts on victims who had these parts amputated as part of criminal or religious punishment. In particular, cutting off the nose was a common punishment for adultery in those days, so nose reconstruction was in high demand. Sushruta created a procedure known as forehead pedicle-flap rhinoplasty in which he used skin from the forehead to repair or replace skin from the nose. Plastic surgeons still use this method today.

Indian doctors and healers relied on Sushruta’s compendium for generations, but the earliest surviving manuscript, known as the Bower Manuscript, comes from the 4th century A.D. In the 8th century, the original Sanskrit text was translated to Arabic and traveled to Mesopotamia, Persia, and Egypt, and by the 15th century, to Europe. Along the way, in Turkey, surgeons even used Sushruta's techniques to perform breast reductions. (Makes you wonder, who was getting breast reductions in the Middle Ages? The Real Housewives of Istanbul?)

A rendering of an apparently painless cataract removal from
an 8th century Arabic translation of the Sushruta Samhita. 
In the late 1700s, when the British annexed parts of India, physicians began studying Indian surgical methods, plastic surgery in particular. One of these doctors, Joseph Constantine Carpue, spent 20 years studying Indian rhinoplasty—nose jobs—and is credited with performing the first major rhinoplasty in the western world (in the UK) in 1815. The forehead pedicle-flap technique Sushruta invented is now known as the Carpue operation. (Insert your own sarcastic comment here.)

Doesn’t it give you a little chuckle that this holiest of places, from one of the world's oldest civilizations, is also the birthplace of plastic surgery? It does me.

16 comments:

  1. I'm so glad I discovered your blog--otherwise how would I learn about the birthplace of plastic surgery among other marvelous things? Wow. You do a wonderful job sharing things of history, literature, the world, and adventures!

    And thanks for the recent follow...appreciate it :-)

    ReplyDelete
  2. Thanks so much for your kind words, Kenda--and likewise! I love Words and Such (http://kendaturner.blogspot.com/)!

    ReplyDelete
  3. It floors me how much advanced medical knowledge was around so long ago. We really have very short memories when it comes to the collective wisdom of our world.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Very informative post. So plastic surgery isn't really modern. But I guess it is just more improved nowadays. :)

    ReplyDelete
  5. I certainly hope so, Shannon! :) Thanks for stopping by.

    ReplyDelete
  6. This is an extraordinary insight into modern plastic surgery which really isn't independent of Sushruta's findings. Thanks for sharing this extraordinary piece of information.
    http://uribemorelli.com

    ReplyDelete
  7. It's really nice facts. this is very valuable ifnormation you share with us . I like this kind of knowledgeable stuff.

    ReplyDelete
  8. I have found this information to be extremely valuable which will definitely help others. Thanks for the article. Great Astrology in Melbourne&Astrology Center in Melbourne | Best Astrologer in Melbourne

    ReplyDelete
  9. Great post, and great website. Thanks for the information! doktor alper mete uğurlu

    ReplyDelete
  10. Wasting time and emergy on false propaganda and fradulent plagiarism! These arguments are not based on facts.Mythological and imaginary points are raised to justify this fake history. Calcutta Medical College was founded in 1839. It was at this time spurious medical and surgical manuscripts in Sanskrit in the fictitious names of Charaka and Sushruta were produced. The Asiatic Society scholars in Calcutta accepted these fake manuscripts as genuine and published research papers in the Society journal. To legitimize this false claim, fanatical Sanskrit pundits, Ayurvedic physicians and some Orientalists chalked out a well planned strategy by which they linked the fictitious Sushrusa with world renowned Western surgeons. In 1815, Joseph Constantine Carpue wrote about a rhinoplasty performed on a wounded soldier whose nose had been all but destroyed in battle, and another patient whose nose had been damaged by arsenic. His work, the “Account of Two Successful Operations for Restoring a Lost Nose” became a standard work in medical colleges. Although the Italian surgeon Tagliacozzi’s treatise on making a nose from an arm flap, De curtorum chirurgia per insitionem(Venice, 1597), was an outstanding work, the condemnation of operation by religious authorities resulted in complete withdrawal of this practice. Students of Calcutta Medical College, founded in 1835, were taught about the works of Tagliacozzi and Carpue and the successful rhinoplasty performed by Carpue .Ayurvedic proponents wanted to show that Carpue and Tagiliacozzi learned rhinoplasty from Sushruta’s technique. It is quite transparent that the essential points in Carpue’s work were plagiarized and Sanskrit manuscripts were published in the fictitious name of Sushruta. To camouflage this act, Ayurvedic physicians claim that Carpue came to India and stayed for 20 years to learn Shusruta's technique of rhinoplasty. But the fact of the matter is that Carpue had never come to India. The British medical journal Lancet is categorical that Carpue stayed and worked in London only.

    They also claim that the Italian Tagliacozzi also learnt from Sushruta's method. To substantiate this false claim they had invented a story that Sushruta's work was translated into Arabic during the Abbasid Caliphate and from there it went to Europe. What a fantastic manipulation! There is no Arabic translation of Shusruta's work during the Caliphate.The famous physician in the Caliphate was Avicenna and he produced treatises and works that summarized the vast amount of knowledge that scientists had accumulated, and was very influential through his encyclopedias, The Canon of Medicine and The Book of Healing. There is absolutely no reference to Sushruta or rhinoplasty in his works. What is more, there is no statement by European surgeons that they received Sushruta's Arabic translation from the Arabs during the Renaissance. Hoernle who deciphered these manuscripts was also fooled by these fake manuscripts.

    Birch bark-leaf manuscripts were alleged to have been found in 1909, and one may wonder how could these manuscripts survive for several centuries? We are told that fortune seekers found these manuscripts. How did the manuscripts find their way to Turkestan? So on the face of it everything is fraudulent.
    Doubting the authenticity of the works, Sir Aurel Stein met with Islam Akhun in Khotan in the spring of 1901. Stein questioned Akhun on the manuscripts and concluded that the manuscripts were fake. Eventually, he exposed Akhun for imitating Brahmi characters and inventing similar-looking characters. Sathyamev jayathae

    ReplyDelete
  11. Contact our great Indian Astrologer in the USA, he will help in tackling your monetary issue and you will get tremendous fortunate money and fortunate approaches to earn money. But you need to do all astrological remedies on time so that you can get the best outcomes of those remedies because the astrological solutions and powerful mantras of Pandit RamDial Ji are very effective.

    Famous Indian Astrologer in Ontario NY

    ReplyDelete
  12. Nice Post!!
    A Best Indian Astrologer in Alabama predicts the future life of an individual with the help of a horoscope based on the time, place and date of the person. As everyone knows, astrology is based entirely on planets and star positions. Changes in the movement and position of the planets have a profound impact on the whole of nature, human behavior and life. Best Indian Astrologer in Alabama - Astrologer Narasimha will help you overcome these questions and realize your motives in life.

    ReplyDelete