And now a page from our “Sunday Morning” Almanac:

October 23rd, 1814, 202 years ago today … the day London doctor Joseph Carpue performed what is widely regarded as the Western world’s first modern plastic surgery operation.

Pioneered in ancient Egypt, plastic surgery was long practiced in India, where Dr. Carpue observed it firsthand.

His subsequent successful operations — and his writings about them — caught the attention of the medical world.