Sawbones: A Marital Tour of Misguided Medicine - Sawbones: Plastic Surgery

Episode Date: March 5, 2014

Welcome to Sawbones, where Dr. Sydnee McElroy and her husband Justin McElroy take you on a whimsical tour of the dumb ways in which we've tried to fix people. This week: We replace your nose with a leaf. Music: "Medicines" by The Taxpayers (http://thetaxpayers.net)

Saw bones is a show about medical history, and nothing the hosts say should be taken as medical advice or opinion. It's for fun. Can't you just have fun for an hour and not try to diagnose your mystery boil? We think you've earned it. Just sit back, relax, and enjoy a moment of distraction from that weird growth. You're worth it. that weird growth. You're worth it. Alright, time is about to books!

One, two, one, two, three, four! We came across a pharmacy with a toy and that's lost it out. We pushed on through the broken glass and had ourselves a look around. The medicines, the medicines, the escalators, my cop, for the mouth Hello, we're ready and welcome to solvows a myrtle tour of Miss guided medicine. I am your co-host Justin McAroy Sydney we finished watching the Oscars on Monday morning because we had a good bed They were on too late. Wait, who can stay up that late nobody can stay up I can't anymore after After watching the Oscar sit, I kind of wanna, I kind of feel like I need to refresh my look.

Hi, I mean, I can understand that. There was certainly a lot of beautiful people. I wanna be one of the beautiful people. I think. You mean kind of like Adele, Mendoza, what was her name? Adele, Menden, Mendoza. Menden, Mendoza.

And I feel like that's really the only thing holding me back. I keep getting passed over for the big nominations, for the big awards. And I feel like that's that a new look could help separate me from the pack. Well, I mean, have you been in any movies? Oh, baby, that's all politics.

That, I mean, because, you know, that, that may be a bigger hurdle. Like the fact that it may be hard to be nominated for best actor if you haven't actually been acting in any films. No, no, no, all politics. It's all in who you know. Sid, it's all who you know. Well, who do you know?

That's the point. I don't know anybody. Nobody wants to talk to me. I don't want to be a fresh look. What I'm thinking about is maybe a little help, a little surgical help. A little surgical help. Exactly. Oh, I don't think that's a good idea.

Well, I do. Surely nobody in Hollywood has had plastic surgery. No, it doesn't happen there, but once you're in Hollywood, they're just naturally that beauty right? Once you're in Hollywood, you don't happen there, but once you're in the pool, that's your in Hollywood. You don't need it anymore, but you have to get something to get there. So that's what I'm needing. And I was hoping, before I go into the process,

you could kind of educate me a little bit about the talk, because this makes it pros you. I know literally nothing about it. No, that sounds about right. Wanting to jump headfirst into something that you have zero knowledge about that? Apart for the course. That's just a macroeol over.

The beginning of plastic surgery, Sydney. Take me on back. All right. Well, before we get started, I want to say thank you to Richard, who recommended this topic of plastic surgery. Thanks, Richard. And we'll be talking about, I want to tell you about plastic surgery.

And I'm kind of like putting together, because some people like to parse out like reconstructive surgery versus purely cosmetic surgery. We're just kind of lumping it all in together for the beginning. Yeah. Okay. The term, especially because I'm assuming plastic wasn't invented. Yes.

Yeah. No, well, I mean, I'm guessing that the word plastic is in like, you know, plastic, the substance. Yes, right. You know, plastic stuff. Plastic. I don't know how to describe it other than that it's plastic. No, it's plastic.

Right. It comes from the same root, the Greek plasticose, which means fit for molding, which I certainly think plastic is. Yes. I mean, it's every, like we're, like everything's made of plastic. Yeah, absolutely. Everything's made of plastic.

We are, right? We're basically plastic. Everything. Like that little girl in a small wonder. Yeah, exactly. People made a plastic. It's the future. So the first mention of plastic surgery comes from an ancient Egyptian text, the Edwin

Smith Papyrus. I'm going to guess the Edwin Smith is the guy who found it. Yeah, my name is Concerracus. I am Philip Rajon. Edwin Smith. This is my papyrus. This is a famous, I wrote a papyrus. If anybody wants to check it out. I'm Edwin Smith. This is my papyrus. I found this, I wrote a papyrus.

If anybody wants to check it out. Because it's definitely like 3,000 to 2,500 BC, ancient Egyptian texts, there's no way there's an ancient Egyptian dude named Edwin Smith. No, absolutely not. So I'm assuming Edwin. Sounds like a folk singer. Edwin found it.

Edwin found it and he read it and he wrote folk songs about it and discovered a passage about nasal reconstruction. So that long ago they were talking about after somebody had broken their nose trying to rebuild it to make it look better. Actually in ancient Egypt most plastic surgery was done on the dead. Why? So it wasn't to make you more beautiful or to look better in any way. That actually would have been a bad thing because the Egyptians felt like in the afterlife, you look exactly like you look on earth and this was very important so that people could recognize you. They didn't want you to be mistaken for somebody else in the afterlife.

So what they would do in order to ensure that after you had died, you would be easily recognizable, they would enhance your most prominent features. Sort of make a caricature of yourself. Yes, of yourself. Of yourself. Right. So for instance, Ramsey's the second after he died, they put, they took a bone and some seeds and stuff them up his nose so that it would stand out very prominently because they felt in life his nose was his most prominent feature. So they wanted to ensure that in the afterlife he would be recognized. Can you imagine the dude who's job, like the guys who had to do that, like they just stuffed a bunch of stuff of ramsies And one packs the other on the sort of hey, so I work today, buddy. This is what we did good work. This is what he would have wanted.

This is what this is what we wake up for. This is yeah, this is this is why we went to school for eight days. This is I'm guessing funerals were different and there weren't like open caskets so they didn't like have the family like grieving looking over going It's wait, is that what is that is that what if they put in his nose? He looks great though so prominent Queen none Nungemit Nungemit She had it much rougher I think They stuffed bandages into her cheeks as after she died, of

course, into her cheeks and in her belly. In the same kind of way, if you think about somebody getting like silicone injected into things to make them plumper and bigger and curveer, to make these stand out more. So I think I would be really upset if somebody tried to make my stomach bigger after I mean. I think that person had it out for her. I'm assuming that this was, I mean, we're talking about different standards of beauty. And there was a long time where really, you know, chubby cheeks and a pop belly and hips and that was the standard of beauty. So maybe that was it.

She was just known for that. Yeah, so look. So can we bring those days back? Real Christine Mijendricks kind of thing going on. There, it is thought that they may have done this stuff on living people as well. I obviously they found that Edwin Smith Papyrus that described rebuilding a nose.

So there's thought that they knew how to do it, but there's a little proof that they did it a lot. We got to think about, we're talking about an age before anesthesia. So people probably weren't rushing to have, you know, elective surgeries. Yeah, that wouldn't, the cost-risk analysis on that really pan out. They found some evidence that they would use reads to like insert inside the nose, you know, to hold it in a certain position while it was healing. So this probably was done at least some, but not very often.

When it really took hold, where it really took hold was in India. So around 800 BC, there's evidence that surgeons started doing more, especially nose jobs. Rhinoplasty or a nose job, that seems to be like the first thing that really took hold. And it spread from India all the way to Europe through Italy. And a lot of the original techniques were a surgeon named Sushruda. Okay. Sushruda. And he would cut skin from the cheek or the forehead.

If you, if this for nose reconstruction. Okay. Take that skin, twist it over a leaf, and then sew it into place over the nose. So I don't think you would result in anything that looked good. Like a nose? Not nose-ish, kind of a tree person kind of vibe, like an int sort of. Would be an interesting pattern.

Yeah, it would be something. It would look like skin, I suppose. Ish. Which I think was the idea. I mean, we're talking about people who probably didn't go to him to say like, I really don't, I think really think my nose is a little bumpy. I mean, I think these were people who probably don't have a nose. Right. Exactly. I got to get that nose look that all my friends and

family seem to be so into. I'd really like a nose back. Please. I want the nose thing. I don't think the noses were functional. I would imagine. Yeah, probably not. The various sensors and connectors. We wouldn't have known how to wire those in. You couldn't have used them for smelling or for wiggling. Just for scaring neighborhood children. What else do you do with your nose? Exclusively.

What? I don't know you're the doctor. Smelling. Smelling? That's right. I can't wiggle it. I think only Samantha could wiggle it. Yeah.

I can't. You're trying to right now. No, you can't do that. Switching it. You can wiggle it. Yeah, I can't. You're trying to right now. I can't do that. Switching it. You can flayer. Oh, you can flayer. I can flayer. You can flayer nostrils to display anger to other bowls. To other bowls. To other bowls in your neighborhood. The British physicians actually wants it, you know, this technique started spreading to Europe, uh, traveled to India and, and tried to learn these techniques. And that's how they eventually took hold in, in the UK, is that they would move to India and learn them. Wow. They should have just called me. I would have liked to hold them. How to do this crazy thing that doesn't really work that well and that kind of looks kind of bad. They should

have called you because they had phones and you were alive then. So I'm sorry, would the leaf like, I'm trying to visualize this like, so you wrap the skin around the leaf and put the leaf, so the leaf on the person's face? See, this confused me too. It looks natural, doesn't it? It doesn't, it looks like a leaf, I guess skin leaf. It, I looked at some diagrams of this,

and it looked like the piece of skin that was being sewn over the nose, it looked like a leaf. But I can't imagine that the actual leaf was still there, but that it retained the shape of a leaf because you used it to spread the skin. Okay. I don't know. I mean, if they were actually showing the leaf into the face, I mean, well, I mean, that'd

be bad. Yeah, that would be... Probably get infected and die. mean, that'd be bad. Yeah, that would be, yeah, probably I'm pretty unpleasant. I don't think a face infection does that well back in those days. Yeah, except fill in face with like anything at all, confection. Yeah, exactly.

But like intentionally sewing a leaf onto your head that just seems like a recipe for danger. The, this continued to be popular because there was an ancient, um, barbaric custom of cutting off your enemy's nose and upper lip, uh, not killing them, just removing that to show that, you know, they've been defeated. And so I think that's why this interest in rebuilding noses became so popular for a while. They still do, still be that in quiz bowl tournaments,

so a lot of local high schools. It's a big problem actually. Like those kids don't have a hard enough. Yeah, really. Come on. How they supposed to keep their glasses on? Did you even think about that? Yeah, they're focusing on their massive wedgies

that they're always getting. I need reconstructive surgery for this nuclear wedgie that I got. I don't know why we're making fun of them, that was us. Yeah, but not anymore. Take that. Everybody's got their own cross-bear kids. The Romans also practice reconstruction of ears mainly. I think what's interesting about the surgeries that they did is that it was considered against their religious beliefs to dissect humans. So they wouldn't have known much about anatomy, like Roman surgeons, based on any real experience,

to dissect a cadaver or anything. That wasn't something that would have been done. So they based it all on Greek anatomical drawings to try to figure out how to reconstruct ears Which is pretty fascinating to think about trying to do that just based on a picture. Yeah The Romans really got into this stuff though because if you as you may be familiar with they spent a lot of time naked Right, they loved it right bad houses exactly So if you're gonna spend a lot of time right, they loved it. Right. Bath houses or actually. Exactly. So if you're going to spend a lot of time, you know, lollying about naked in a bathhouse,

you get really concerned with how your body looks. And in particular, parts of your body that people usually wouldn't be able to see, but now all of a sudden, you know, because of culture, everybody sees them and can start comparing them. Right. So all of a sudden, genital reconstruction, surgery became popular. Alterations or just reconstruction? No, I should say alterations. Okay. Reconstructing it to look different. Reconstructing it to look like my neighbor, Dan. look different. Reconstructed to look like my neighbor, Dan's. Danicus. Circumcision was the most popular one. So that doesn't seem so radical. Right. But that extended to even

like for men, breast reductions became popular. They just want a nail. They're a look. It's a high pressure atmosphere around the bath. Danicus is just letting his his olive branch hang out there and you know, it's a little intimidating So that I think that that is maybe an area of plastic surgery that is not explored and full enough today Maybe we could learn some techniques from the Romans They also in this kind of same vein, you know, they hated things that made you less beautiful. So scars were a common thing to try to get plastic surgery to have removed and redone. I doubt that they could do that very convincingly. I can't imagine how they were able to do that considering that they probably caused bigger

scars. We could put a worse scar on top of it. Would that be good? The main thing that they hated were scars for a man to have a scar on his back. Really? That was a big deal. It was a big deal. The reason being that the implication is that you have a scar on your back, you turned your back on your enemy and tried to run away. Oh, weird. So you looked cowardly and shameful. And so they would try to have those scars removed.

Or the other implication is that you may have been a slave and been beaten. And again, that was something you didn't want people to know if you had been a slave. Backwards, they feel. Yeah. So the other segment of the population that had a lot of reconstructive surgery, a gladiators. Really? It was not uncommon for a gladiator to get their nose or ear chopped off. So they had to get sort of a fake, fake nose or ears. Exactly. Well, especially, I mean, well, only I wasn't

to say, especially if they survived. Yeah. Only if they survived. Nobody's that vain afterwards. Well, because you know, if you're a gladiator and you survive the ring, you, you go free. Yeah, right. I mean, that's the deal with gladiators. You get riches. Seems like you get riches. Do you get riches too? I would think you probably get some riches because you gotta get a starter. else you're just gonna

end up right back in slavery. I didn't know that you also got riches. I do know I thought you just got well, maybe do. Maybe they just help you get on your feet. Help you get it. Help you get a decent tell them marketing gig or something. I don't know, call Russell Crowe and ask him. I'm sure there's some service helps those people for that job rehabilitation. It's a platformer gladiators. Special skills, I can kill a lion. You have a lion problem?

So I can take care of that. I only have one ear. I have one ear so I can keep a secret. I guess. So they in order to fit into society better and to get their telemarketing jobs, they had to have their noses and ears reconstructed. So that was also something that was done.

Galen, we've talked about him a lot, a physician at the time, did Rhinoplasty. So he did some nasal reconstructions. He also did surgeries on droopy eyelids. Yeah, purely cosmetic at that point, right? Yeah Unless they do it so much that you couldn't see Well, that's fair. Now that's really droopy eyelids super droopy. That is a thing. That actually is a thing that's done I'm sorry if you have that by the way Yeah, that is a rough thing and that is a real surgery

And I don't think you could call it cosmetic at that point, because that's purely functional. Yeah, you just kind of need it. Functional, you can't. Yeah. But I don't know from what I read. I don't know that he was purely doing it for functional reasons. I think it was also, you know. Get that fresh.

My eyelids are droopy. Help me. My penis is too small. It's just that. And also while you're in there, you said skin for my eyelids. The Romans would have been totally into that though. They were a very vain culture. So the idea, I think that our current idea that it's okay to alter your body to make it more pleasing to you, if there's something you feel like you need to do for you, I think the Romans would have totally

jived with that. They would have said, oh yeah, if we had known how to put people to sleep, we would have been into it. Yeah, or make things that didn't look so weird. If we didn't make everything out of leaves, it would seem weird. No, that's what that's see, that was in India, leaves were in India. They were mainly just taking skin from various places in Rome. Now, this kind of started falling out of favor in the Middle Ages. Are there religion ruined it? Yes. There's there's about two reasons, religion and superstition. So well, no, no, not going to touch that one. No, not going there. No, no, no, no, don't even. So the church was a big reason.

Especially the pope declared it sinful to alter your body. You know, it was your gift from God and to make any changes to it, especially if you're talking about cosmetic, you know, the way that it came out initially would have been a huge sin. And so that was one big reason. And then the second was that people, for whatever reason, we've talked about this before, got really stupid for a while.

And they thought that surgery in general may be evil, because you're allowing somebody else to spill your blood and then you're supposed to live through it, and that that implied some sort of magical power. Oh, God, come on. And that maybe it gave the surgeon control over you, maybe they were doing some kind of spell.

Come on, middle ages people. They really weren't clear on it. They just thought it sounded fishy. We did take a big step back, didn't we? Yeah, we did. Like, things seemed to be going like on a pretty cool path, and then we just chilled. We were at a time where we weren't. We weren't.

We weren't. We didn't chill. We like took two steps back. We got really stupid. People were laying around naked in bathhouses going, hey, I think I'm going to go get my penis done to look more like yours next Tuesday. Yeah, like we've figured it out. We've figured it out.

We've figured it out. Get that done. Do it. Go for like we've figured out you, Max, we can get it out. Get that done. Do it. Go for it. It's standing there truth. Live your life. And then you fast forward and all the sudden we're like, don't take out my appendix.

You sorcerer. I don't know what spells are going to use that for. I'd rather die because you would. Because I will. Well, in fact, I. Not that I doubt that surgeons would have been very good at appendectomy So anyway, they're just like reaching and grabbing whatever lump of flesh. They can it's like a it's like a claw machine at the movie theater I just grabbing whatever they can latch on to and yank it out now to be fair though. This fix is it We're also talking about a time period where it probably wasn't a big deal to go down to the graveyard dig up some some bodies and dissect them for science. That was the kind of thing they would have been into.

That's fine. Yes. Because it, I don't know, because everybody was doing something gross at the time. Yeah, millages are the pets. With the renaissance, some interest, you know, was renewed. There were some surgeons that attempted, instead of human skin, they thought, hey, why don't we try with other animals? Cause it was always disfiguring in another way if you have to take skin off of you somewhere. And they weren't very good at that either and it was incredibly painful

and they didn't know how to harvest it without leaving a lot of other scars. So why don't we take some pig skin? How was really helping you to say bear arms, but that's okay, We'll do pig skin. Like give people bear arms. Like the arms of a bear. So like remove their arms and then put bear arms on them. Yes. Sweet. How sweet would that be? I don't know if you have the strength of bear arms if you just attached. You know, because I'm assuming that's why

you'd want those right? Like for the strength factor. Wow, the muscles. You just connect the wiring I guess. He used to connect everything, tie everything together. They definitely were capable of that. Yeah, well, what would you be? No, I'm not a surgeon. Could you give me a beer, could a surgeon give me a beer arms? I don't think a surgeon would give you a beer arms.

Don't I have the right to bear arms? Was that where all this was leading? Was that this whole thing was this a big set up for that? All member town. This was that I'm sorry to everyone listening. Really? Really? It was mad because you walked right into it. Did you have some caffeine or something before we get to any? You just walked right into it and you feel like like a mark. Drink some coffee. Because I made you buy my pack. See this is the best you got tonight. You're just mad as I you're taking a fall for that.

The good grip. It's a long con. I knew you fell for it. Our unborn child heard that. That's what he thinks it was dad now. Did listen or she's lucky. He was dead. It's not peeking right now.

Did, listen, he's lucky. He's lucky. He does not peeking right now. Okay. Um, the, uh, the skin, the pig skin that they would transplant onto human. Again, we're probably mainly talking about noses. Uh, it would usually, well, would always die. Sure. Uh, it didn't work.

And the reason that they, they figured this probably happened is that it was feeling sympathy to its donor and must die with its donor pig. Yeah, that's a good excuse. Good job guys. It just felt so sad. So sad. That was some pig there, right? Oh well.

Which, you know what that made me wonder though? I wonder if somebody tried, because if they thought that the natural thing would be, well, maybe we can take some skin off of this pig without killing it. Can anybody try that? To take the pig skin without killing it. Without killing the pig and then transplant it to the human and see if the skin still died. I mean, if you thought it died with the donor. Possibly. I don't know. Is this something I thought about it? Yeah, okay, Jeffrey Downer. possibly. I don't know. Is this something I thought about us? Yeah. Okay, Jeffrey Downer. Just like trying to curtail those thoughts for me.

Like you don't eat bacon. What are you talking? It's a pig. Not bacon strip from the living pig. It's a squirrel that had to be eaten and it's preserved through which crop? I didn't say you take its skin and then you... You should take its skin while it lives. And then you'll fry it up and eat it in front of it. Oh, no, no, no, no.

I'll wash this baby. Oh, well, bar. This is delicious. No. No, I don't. And then you fry it up and eat it in front of it. Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no start cutting the pig, and you know, the bacon's right underneath there, who's gonna be able to stop themselves, nobody? Wait, tell me how good would you be at finding the bacon and a pig? I would just shout out it until it told me. I'd like Jack, I go full Jack Bauer. I'd kill a family in front of it. Where's the bacon? You freak out when we get bone-in chicken breasts. I'm fair.

He's fair. Um, so obviously we weren't making any advances with Pixkin. And we weren't making any advances with our podcasts. And all came out the watch. I wonder if that, if immediately after that I said, you know, this really isn't working for faces. Maybe footballs? Maybe.

Oh god, we've got all this. I just bought all this big scale. We have all this big scale. What else could we do with it? I don't know. Some oddly shaped sporting equipment. Quick, so many. Only Americans will love.

Someone invent a touchdown. Let's steal the name from soccer. Then call it soccer. What soccer? Exactly. We just made it up so we can take football. So the the real father of modern plastic surgery is probably Gispero, Tagliacosie. That's going to decide that's bad. That's not good. And he saw a big need because people were losing a lot of noses to syphilis at the time.

people were losing a lot of noses to syphilis at the time. And so he wanted to help you reconstruct your nose. And it was kind of a, if you could, if you think about it, it would be kind of a mark of shame at the time that you would lose your nose and you didn't have one, but they also, people also would assume you had syphilis. So he reconstructed your nose. So you still water on your pants?

It's like, it's already coming embarrassing because I hear pants are webbing with things you pee yourself. Not on pregnancy pants. No, that's water resistant. I learned that today, water resistant. You pee your pants today? No, I poured my water bottle on myself accidentally.

Oh, man. Shut up. Tough rope for this kid to hell, huh? Anyway, so they reconstructed, he reconstructed noses from arm skin, but the problem with these noses twofold. One, they didn't look like a real nose. That's probably the biggest issue. You still knew that that was, okay, well, that's not a real nose.

Since losing your nose was a sign of, you probably had a venereal disease, and maybe you were of loose moral character, and all these horrible things that were associated with it and the religious attitudes, it really didn't help you as far as your standing in society. Nobody was fooled, basically. Especially for women. If you were a woman who lost your nose to syphilis and then you had it reconstructed,

your husband was gonna divorce you, almost for sure. And that was a reason for divorce. Actually, he could just leave you. No, wonderful. I know, your husband was gonna divorce you, almost for sure. And that was a reason for divorce. Actually, he could just leave you. No, wonderful. I know, thanks, men. Thanks history. Again, thank you again. I'm just saying, again.

So it was a really rough road to hoe, especially for women. But the other reason that these noses weren't particularly effective is that if you blew them too hard, like you know, blew your nose and you did it too hard, it would fall off. Oh, you hate to do that, that. Nothing's gonna ruin your family picture faster.

So cold and flu season must have just... Grizzly, I mean just been grizzly. Super awkward. Can you imagine? No. Halloween. You know Gary, you sound like congested. Do you want to know? Nope, nope, nope, nope, nope, nope, no, I'm just gonna just hang with this. Okay. Is that all right? It's cool. I'm fine. I'm gonna take some

Greek nightgull. As you can imagine, a lot of advances weren't made. Not fake, you know, whatever time period we're talking about. Or Dylan, Italian. Italian, Italian nightglow. Is that how you say it? Yeah. Nightglow. That's the brand nightglow. Like Mario.

Yeah, it's me, nightglow. As you can imagine, again, we're not talking about a lot of advances in this field because surgery was, well, one, it was really dangerous, you know, the risk of infection and blood loss. It was huge. And so to go under the knife, electively, it was just not a popular thing to do. But the other was that there was no anesthesia. And why would you want to do it if you're going to hurt like crazy the whole time?

Well, I'm not bad also. You know, we've talked, we've noticed a lot since we got pregnant that there's not a whole lot of research about pregnancy in terms of like what's safe and what's not. There's no one wants to be the test case for it. No, it seems like this would be a similar situation where like, if there's a new procedure someone wants to try out, like, no one wants to be the guinea pig for that because it's largely elective and it could, you know, kind of mess your scene up.

You don't have that pressure of like, well, this might save my life. Which seems like the optimal situation for somebody who wants to test a medical treatment. No, you're exactly right. I mean, if you if you could live, you can live without a nose. You live without an ear. Why submit yourself to any of this? So it was really, as we move forward with the invention of anesthesia and the perfection of those techniques that shows advances in this field. And I mean, that's true for all

surgeries, not just plastics, but you really weren't seeing a lot of advances until patients could get through it without being in excruciating pain and maybe dying of shock. And then you start seeing, I think it's one before we move forward with all the advances modern plastic surgery. In 1814, there was one British military officer who had to have his nose replaced and this is when we're really moving into the era of some anesthesia and when people started to be able to survive surgeries a little more and it was because he had

had too many mercury treatments, he lost his nose. I like that tie-in with our mercury episode. But it's really as we move into the 1800s that we see people doing more and more plastic surgeries, where anesthesia is growing, we're starting to learn how to do things again without pain and without killing people. The first American to really do plastic surgery is a profession, John Peter mature, and he built his own tools, which I think is kind of cool. So he read and studied what people in other countries were doing and then he started repairing

mainly cleft palettes. That's no work. So he did a lot of cleft palette or parry also did hypospatius. That's a medical condition where you're born with your rethera, so it's for a male. And your rether, so it's for a male and your your rether instead of coming out the tip of your penis is on Under on the underside. Oh gosh kind of on the bottom. I mean, it's still something that happens from time to time and it's something we can repair And he spent time repairing that as well. So that's some noble work there. Yeah

However, it was still slow going really until we hit the 1900s because we're still up against this idea that it's God's plan for you to have a cleft palate, and you can't tamper with it. He's spoken like anybody who has a not cleft palate. Exactly. Exactly. And so a lot of surgeons just wouldn't learn these techniques, criticized him, and it made the growth of plastic surgery until the 1900s very, very slow. But the thing that changed that

was World War I. And I mean, it was really again out of necessity. Soldiers coming back from World War I had all kinds of injuries that, I mean you know We're talking about people who not only had you know facial injuries, but lost limbs and plastic surgery was really the field to do anything that you know that didn't seem like necessary for survival But would certainly make your quality of life better plastic started to take over a lot of that and So they became more popular and broader. And we started to see that there's a lot more to plastics than just doing things that make people prettier. But there's a lot of reconstructive surgery

that can be really helpful for people. And so then surgery became more widespread. At first, it was kind of a scatter shot if you were getting like a real plastic surgeon or somebody who just thought, hey, I could build a nose. Maybe I could. Well, and as we're moving into the early 1900s, you're still dealing with a lot of fake kind of quack doctors who aren't doctors. You get away with that back then. But they established societies of licensed plastic surgeons and started to, you know, come up with

qualifications for it and then the field just blossomed from there, especially in the 50s and 60s. That's when we start to see the purely just cosmetic procedures beginning to grow hugely in popularity as our ideal of beauty started to change. The idea that you could alter your own appearance and become more beautiful that you didn't have to just settle for whatever you were born with, that you could fix your, you know, get a boob job or fix your nose or whatever, whatever you didn't like about yourself, you could fix really took hold in the 60s and from there it just exploded.

How big is it now? It's pretty common, yeah. About 15 million people worldwide yearly get plastic surgery. Wow, huge. So I tell you what said actually this episode has kind of turned me off a little bit. I'm probably going to hold off until I can decide the exact celebrity I wanna emulate, probably Bieber. I'm a little mean in Bieber.

I like you just the way you are. Thanks, Pumpkin. I'd rather you not. I like you just the way you are. And I like our listeners just the way they are. They are so kind to tweet about the show. Katrina, Katrina. Katrina.

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Be sure to join us again next Tuesday for another episode until then I'm Justin McElroy. I'm Sydney McElroy. And it's always don't throw a hole in your head. Maximumfund.org Comedy and Culture, Artists Don't Listen or Supported