FIRST PUBLISHED FACELIFT

PASSOT, RAYMOND.

La Chirurgie Esthétique des Rides du Visage. [In: La Presse Médicale. No 27. Lundi, 12 Mai 1919].

(Paris), 1919.

Folio. With a nice, later paper backstrip. Entire issue 27, 1919 of La Presse Médicale present (pp. 353- 360). Passot's article: 7 columns on pp. 258-261. With one illustration, depicting the ways to reduce wrinkles on a face. Well preserved.

The very rare first printing of this pioneering work of plastic surgery - one of the very first - most likely THE first - publication on face lifting, consisting mainly in the elevating and redraping of the facial skin.

The first facelift was reportedly done in either 1901 or 1907, but "[n]ot all writers of rhytidectomy spread their innovations through publication; some were teachers instead of writers. Sooner or later, however, those they taught began to write. Giving credit to his masters, Pozzi and Morestin, as well as Mlle. Pertat, Raymond Passot in 1919 described the following technique for eliminating cheek wrinkles and the buccolabial sulcus: First, he began the operation by "withdrawing miniscule amounts of tegument in the preauricular region, using as a limit the lower part of the male's sideburns and the region onto which the mass of the female feair falls...." (Gonzales-Ulloa, The Creation of Aesthetic Surgery, p. 43).

The paper is extremely famous, not only due to its great influence, but also because it has come to be regarded as a milestone publication in the history of face lifting, being perhaps the very first publication to describe this now so popular method of rejuvenation.

"There is still doubt as to who performed the first facelift, but most sources date it to the first decade of the 20th century.... Hollander... in 1932 stated that his original procedure had been preformed in 1901 for a Polish aristocrat. Lexer, however, reported in 1931 that he had preformed a facelift for and acr´tress in 1906 and that he was unaware of any such operation before that date. Joseph reported in 1921 that he had preformed an operation in 1912 for cerrection of aging cheek tissues in a 48-year-old woman. By the time Hollander, lexer, and Joseph reported their first procedures, a number of other prominent surgeons in Europe, such as Noel, Passot, Morseting... were busy performing cosmetic surgical procedures.... Passot in 1919 published an illustrated article showing sites of elliptic skin excision of the hairline, the forehead, and the temporal and preauricular areas to tighten the skin and an elliptic excision of skin and fat to reduce submental fat deposits." (Neligan, Plastic Surgery, vol. 6, p. 184).

"In France, Passot was the first surgeon to describe the submental excision to correct a double chin and multiple facial direct excisions in 1919 in his article "La chirurgie esthétiques des rides du visage". (Panfilov, Aesthetic Surgery of the Facial Mosic, p. 5).

Order-nr.: 60126