The word plastic in plastic surgery comes from the Greek plastikos, meaning “able to be shaped or molded.” The name refers to reshaping the body, and the practice itself is far older than modern synthetic plastic.

Some of the earliest recorded reconstructive surgery was performed in ancient India. The surgeon Sushruta, who probably lived sometime during the first millennium BCE, described techniques for rebuilding damaged noses using flaps of a patient’s own skin.

There was practical reason for this expertise. Nose injuries and amputations were not uncommon, and Indian surgeons developed increasingly sophisticated ways to reconstruct them. One method used skin from the forehead while preserving its blood supply, allowing the tissue to survive as it was shaped into a new nose.

Versions of that basic technique are still used in reconstructive surgery today.

Centuries later, similar procedures appeared in Europe. Renaissance surgeons in Italy developed methods for rebuilding noses, and in the early 1800s British surgeon Joseph Constantine Carpue successfully revived the Indian forehead-flap technique after learning about operations performed in India.

The term plastic surgery came into medical use in the 19th century, long before modern synthetic plastics became common.