According to Ohio - basedplastic surgeonDr . Brian Dorner , one prevailing misconception about his field of force is where it gets its name . As he explained in ablog postfor his practice , people tend to assume we call it “ plastic ” surgery simply because breast implants are made from plastic .
Actually , breast implants are made usingsilicone shellsand are filled with either saline or silicone colloidal gel . But not everybodyagreesthat silicone even count as a eccentric of plastic : It ’s more of acrossbetween arctic and charge card . But the heavy hole in this aim pedigree chronicle is that the termplastic surgerypredates the invention ofbreast implantsby several decades . In fact , it predate theinventionof synthetic plastics , too .
The wordplasticderives from the Latinplasticusand the Greekplastikos , mean “ primed for molding , subject of being shape into various forms ; pertaining to modelling , ” per theOnline Etymology Dictionary . Whenplasticfirst appeared in writing in the belated 16th 100 — spelledplasticke — it referred to the art of molding or sculpting , typically with remains or wax . By the 17th century , people started using it as a term for the artist who did the sculpting , and as a way of life to distinguish their land up artwork . Plastic(plusplastique , plastick , and other variations ) also became an adjective , key any malleable stuff that could be molded .
The first written disc of the termplastic surgerycomes from an 1837 issue of the medical journalThe Lancet , which call it “ a offshoot of surgery in which alone the operating surgeon becomes a real creative person . ” In other words , plasticdidn’t just bear on to the fact that the operating surgeon was working with very plastic materials ; it also invoked the longstanding artistic connotations of the word . So did related terminus such asrhinoplasty(nose reconstruction ) , which first started present up in photographic print back in the 1820s . The Encyclopedia of Americadescribedit as “ the art of restoring the nose . ”
Whileplastic surgerydidn’t get its New title until the 19th century , multitude had been experimenting with bodily remodeling for at least a few thousand year before then . In Egypt circa 1200 BCE , for good example , Ramses II get a postmortemnose caper .
