Plastic surgery is the surgical repair of skin defects and deformities, the removal of skin tumors, and surgical reconstruction. Increasingly, however, this medical specialty includes other procedures such as fatty-tissue removal, wrinkle reduction, breast and penile enlargement or reduction, and even the permanent application of make-up. Technological advances and changing cultural mores have continually broadened the scope of plastic surgery such that it is now primarily equated with cosmetic or aesthetic surgery.

Surgery may well be the oldest branch of medicine, but many centuries passed before modern methods, including plastic surgery, were possible. It was not until precise knowledge of the body was available, anesthesia was understood, and methods of controlling hemorrhage and post-operative infection were devised that complex surgery could be undertaken. There is evidence to suggest, however, that surgery could have been an ancient practice. One Indian text dating from the fourth century B...