The history of aesthetic medicine and surgery.

The history of beauty is as old as mankind itself--throughout history people have tried to improve their attractiveness and to enhance their beauty. The technical basis for many of nowadays procedures like lipoplasty, breast augmentation or rhinoplasty was thereby initiated more than a hundred years ago and evolved to the modern standards of today. The aim of this article is to recall the early days of aesthetic medicine and show the swift progress up to the highly specialized medical discipline of our modern time. Combining the past, present and future of aesthetic medicine, allows to incorporate this perspective and ultimately to delivery better patient care.