Plastic surgery is a surgical specialty involving the restoration, reconstruction, or alteration of the human body. It can be divided into two main categories: reconstructive surgery and cosmetic surgery. Reconstructive surgery covers a wide range of specialties, including craniofacial surgery, hand surgery, microsurgery, and the treatment of burns. This category of surgery focuses on restoring a body part or improving its function. In contrast, cosmetic surgery focuses solely on improving the physical appearance of the body. A comprehensive definition of plastic surgery has never been established, because it has no distinct anatomical object and thus overlaps with practically all other surgical specialties. An essential feature of plastic surgery is that it involves the treatment of conditions that require or may require tissue relocation skills.
Surgery is a medical specialty that uses manual and instrumental techniques to diagnose or treat pathological conditions, to alter bodily functions, to reconstruct or improve aesthetics and appearance, or to remove unwanted tissues or foreign bodies. The subject receiving the surgery is typically a person, but can also be a non-human animal.
This is a timeline of the history of medicine and medical technology.
Abū al-Qāsim Khalaf ibn al-'Abbās al-Zahrāwī al-Ansari, popularly known as al-Zahrawi (الزهراوي), Latinised as Albucasis or Abulcasis, was a physician, surgeon and chemist from al-Andalus. He is considered one of the greatest surgeons of the Middle Ages.
In surgery or medical procedure, a ligature consists of a piece of thread (suture) tied around an anatomical structure, usually a blood vessel, another hollow structure or an accessory skin tag to shut it off.
Ambroise Paré was a French barber surgeon who served in that role for kings Henry II, Francis II, Charles IX and Henry III. He is considered one of the fathers of surgery and modern forensic pathology and a pioneer in surgical techniques and battlefield medicine, especially in the treatment of wounds. He was also an anatomist, invented several surgical instruments, and was a member of the Parisian barber surgeon guild.
Philip Syng Physick was an American physician and professor born in Philadelphia. He was the first professor of surgery and later of anatomy at the University of Pennsylvania medical school from 1805 to 1831 during which time he was a highly influential teacher. Physick invented a number of surgical devices and techniques including the stomach tube and absorbable sutures. He has been called the "Father of American Surgery."
The Kitāb al-Taṣrīf, known in English as The Method of Medicine, is a 30-volume Arabic encyclopedia on medicine and surgery, written near the year 1000 by Abu al-Qasim al-Zahrawi (Abulcasis). It is available in translation. The Kitab al-Tasrif took al-Zahrawi over 50 years to complete. It contains information about a wide variety of illnesses, injuries, medical conditions, treatments, and surgical procedures. It describes over 200 different surgical instruments. Surgeons continued to rely on the Kitab al-Tasrif well into the 1700s.
Lithotomy from Greek for "lithos" (stone) and "tomos" (cut), is a surgical method for removal of calculi, stones formed inside certain organs, such as the urinary tract, bladder, and gallbladder (gallstones), that cannot exit naturally through the urinary system or biliary tract. The procedure is usually performed by means of a surgical incision. Lithotomy differs from lithotripsy, where the stones are crushed either by a minimally invasive probe inserted through the exit canal, or by an acoustic pulse, which is a non-invasive procedure. Because of these less invasive procedures, the use of lithotomy has decreased significantly in the modern era.
William Stewart Halsted, M.D. was an American surgeon who emphasized strict aseptic technique during surgical procedures, was an early champion of newly discovered anesthetics, and introduced several new operations, including the radical mastectomy for breast cancer. Along with William Osler, Howard Atwood Kelly and William H. Welch, Halsted was one of the "Big Four" founding professors at the Johns Hopkins Hospital. His operating room at Johns Hopkins Hospital is in Ward G, and was described as a small room where medical discoveries and miracles took place. According to an intern who once worked in Halsted's operating room, Halsted had unique techniques, operated on the patients with great confidence and often had perfect results which astonished the interns.
A retractor is a surgical instrument used to separate the edges of a surgical incision/wound or to hold away certain organs and tissues so that body parts underneath may be accessed during surgical operations.
Guy de Chauliac, also called Guido or Guigo de Cauliaco, was a French physician and surgeon who wrote a lengthy and influential treatise on surgery in Latin, titled Chirurgia Magna. It was translated into many other languages and widely read by physicians in late medieval Europe.
The Sushruta Samhita is an ancient Sanskrit text on medicine and one of the most important such treatises on this subject to survive from the ancient world. The Compendium of Suśruta is one of the foundational texts of Ayurveda, alongside the Charaka-Saṃhitā, the Bhela-Saṃhitā, and the medical portions of the Bower Manuscript. It is one of the two foundational Hindu texts on the medical profession that have survived from ancient India.
Sushruta is the listed author of the Sushruta Samhita, a treatise considered to be one of the most important surviving ancient treatises</ref> on medicine and is considered a foundational text of Ayurveda. The treatise addresses all aspects of general medicine, but the impressive chapters on surgery have led to the false impression that this is its main topic. The translator G. D. Singhal dubbed Suśruta "the father of plastic surgery" on account of these detailed accounts of surgery.
In medicine, a surgeon is a medical doctor who performs surgery. Even though there are different traditions in different times and places, a modern surgeon is a licensed physician and received the same medical training as physicians before specializing in surgery.
Surgery is the branch of medicine that deals with the physical manipulation of a bodily structure to diagnose, prevent, or cure an ailment. Ambroise Paré, a 16th-century French surgeon, stated that to perform surgery is, "To eliminate that which is superfluous, restore that which has been dislocated, separate that which has been united, join that which has been divided and repair the defects of nature."
The Hill–Physick–Keith House, also known as the Hill–Keith–Physick House, the Hill–Physick House, or simply the Physick House, is a historic house museum located at 321 S. 4th Street in the Society Hill neighborhood of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA. Built 1786, it was the home of Philip Syng Physick (1768–1837), who has been called "the father of American surgery". The house was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1976. It is now owned and operated by the Philadelphia Society for the Preservation of Landmarks as a house museum.
Couching is the earliest documented form of cataract surgery. It involves dislodging the lens of the eye, thus removing the cloudiness caused by the cataract. Couching was a precursor to modern cataract surgery and pars plana vitrectomy.
Cataract surgery has a long history in Europe, Asia, and Africa. It is one of the most common and successful surgical procedures in worldwide use, thanks to improvements in techniques for cataract removal and developments in intraocular lens (IOL) replacement technology, in implantation techniques, and in IOL design, construction, and selection. Surgical techniques that have contributed to this success include microsurgery, viscoelastics, and phacoemulsification.
