15. Early cosmetic surgeries were immensely dangerous for the patient, in particular, those who underwent paraffin wax injections for bodily enhancements and alterations
Beginning with the earliest of known surgeries, the “Edwin Smith Papyrus” from Ancient Egypt, dated to 3000-2500 BCE, records the reconstructive repair of a broken nose. These procedures reached India by 800 BCE and Rome by the 1st century BCE, whereupon the field of plastic surgery was gradually developed over the next two thousand years; the first recorded such surgeries took place in 16th century Europe, with so-called “barber-surgeons” known in Tudor England for treating damaged or disfigured faces with varying degrees of success. Of particular note, Heinrich von Pfloseudnt is credited with the creation of a process for grafting skin from the back of the arm to create a new nose in the 15th century; deserving of special praise for his meritorious restraint, atypically for contemporaneous medicine Pfloseudnt designated the procedure as too risky given available tools to perform on a human subject.
With the refinement of anesthesia during the 19th-century plastic surgeries increased in both frequency and appeal, advertised in popular magazines as treatments for “humped, depressed, or ill-shaped noses” and “the finger marks of Time”; perhaps most notorious of these cosmetic introductions was an early form of artificial enhancements. Achieved through the use of paraffin wax, with the stated purposes of concealing wrinkles, breast augmentation, or nose alterations, this hot liquid wax was injected into the patient and then “molded by the operator into the desired shape” whilst still warm; however, upon hardening the wax habitually grew into intensely painful deposits and could migrate through the body to other areas causing severe disfigurement or even fatally cancerous blockages.