Breast Implants

First Mention: 1889

Use: Restores/Augments the breasts

You walk into a bar and what is the first thing you see? Well if you are a guy there are two possibilities, one the plethora of women, or two the plethora of breasts. `Yet when it comes down to it, which breast, I mean woman, sticks out? Popular culture will most likely say the one with the biggest breasts, and why not? Big breasts signify maturity and fertility in a female. But little would you know, some of these wonders may just be filled with ox cartilage!

Yet, in our constant struggle to match the Mr and Misses Perfect we see on the big screen some have gone to the extremes of attaining the artificial level of perfection which we as a society have constructed.

Breast implants are probably the most associated form of plastic surgery which we associate with the search for lustful perfection, but their origin is somewhat painful in many cases.

The idea of breast augmentation was first recorded and reported in 1889 by Robert Gersuny who fiddled with the idea. Breast Implantation and surgery was first recorded though in 1895 when surgeon Vincenz Czerny performed a breast augmentation on his patient which had a tumor removed from her breast. The motivation behind the operation was certainly not the same as it is today in many cases but none the less it was the first recorded case of such a surgery. What followed was only limited by the practitioners imaginations and demand of customers.

The early 20^th century saw the development and standardization of the breast implant market with physicians experimenting and performing implantations using materials such as: ivory, glass balls, ground rubber, ox cartilage, Terylene wiil, gutta-percha, Dicora, polyethylene chips, Ivalon, Etheron, Polystan, foam sponges, and finally the silicon rubber we are all too familiar with today.