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?)
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. |
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.
