Plastic surgeons report that post-holiday winter is the most popular time of year for cosmetic surgery. This is in part a practical affair: the party season is on pause and the heaver clothes of winter conceal the scars and swelling of operations. The would-be patient can hibernate in the aftermath of their nips and tucks only to emerge, butterfly-like, in time for swimsuit season.
Given the dangers and discomfort associated with surgery in the time before effective antiseptics, anesthetics, and antibiotics, we might expect that cosmetic surgery was a relatively recent innovation. And, for many procedures, that is certainly the case. But not so for rhinoplasty, which was invented in the center of the Ganges valley thousands of years ago.
