The First Breast Implants

By delving into history you can see that unhappiness with the size and shape of breasts isn't new. Even over one hundred years ago, women were still unhappy with the size of their breasts. This was mainly due to assymetry. However the augmentation aspect was very new, and therefore experimental.

In 1890 the first surgical breast augmentation procedure was performed with a paraffin injection. However the paraffin injection obviously led to problems. They led to infections, lump formations in the breast, and other horiffic side effects. By the '20s paraffin injections became out of favor for breast augmentation.

In the 1920 fat transplants were tried. Tissue was surgically removed from the belly and buttock areas and trasferred into the breast. It sounds amazing, I mean you could get a flat stomach and bigger breasts! However this was unsuccessful as the body would quickly reabsorb most of the fat, leaving the breast lumpy and lopsided. Women were often left more unhappy than they had started, often ending up with scars all over the body.

In the 50s polyvinyl sponges started to be implanted into the breasts for breast augmentation. They were useless. You can imagine a sponge being compresed by muscle and skin, after a short time the sponge flattened, became hard and caused infections. They also led to a cancer scare, and were soon abandoned.

However other items were tried; surgeons implanted everything from ivory balls and wool to cartilage but none of it worked.

In the 60's silicone injections directly into the breast were tried. This is very similar to Macrolane, which is available today. However injecting silicone directly into the tissue also casued chornic inflammation, infections, and lumps, as well as discoloration. These complications caused this form of breast augmentation to fall out of favor.

However silicone itself gave a good shape, and led to a natural feel and texture. So one company thought 'why not put silicone into a protective casing?'

Thus the implant was born!

Interesting read!! x

That's really interesting - I had no idea they used to do all that!

C x

Wow! I never realised they went back that far. Fascinating... thank you. xx

Gosh, yeah, that's fascinating. Thank you!

Well you learn something new everyday!
A paraffin injection? no wonder there was problems.
I always joked about having some of the fat taken from my bum & put in my boobs!
it just shows how much the world has advanced tho.

mah81 wrote:A paraffin injection? no wonder there was problems.

Vaseline boobies!

bump for new girls to read x

OMG, those poor women ... guinnea pig springs to mind!

Amazing!!! I guess it all boils down to how much they wanted new boobies, i suppose they didnt know any different anyway.
In hunderds of years to come people will probs read this site and be like "I cant believe them girls use to have silicone implants, when u can just eat a breast enlargement pill" (or something along them lines) u get where im coming from, hahahah, xxxx

Ivory balls.... amazing!

Thanks goodness science has moved on! I saw the series "Blood and Guts" on Channel 4, a history of surgery (including one on plastic surgery) and it was truly horrific! (I now have a deeper appreciation for the gift of anaesthetic..)

They also used to inject paraffin into their faces in the 20's (early botox?) and when sitting near a fire it would then start to melt and go lumpy - yuk!

littlemisstiny1 wrote:They also used to inject paraffin into their faces in the 20's (early botox?) and when sitting near a fire it would then start to melt and go lumpy - yuk!

Yes, I heard that. Pretty horrific!!

Maria
xx