4290. RECONSTRUCTIVE SURGERY IS AN ANCIENT ART

RECONSTRUCTIVE SURGERY

IS AN ANCIENT ART

My own heart may have been misplaced, or laced by

chance to somewhere in my arm or back. I don't know,

except that it still beats and hammers for things like

you : enameled and gilded statuary, the porcelain of

the finest things. In 600 B.C., Sushruta, a scholar from

Varnasi, made catalogue listings of over 300 things :

surgical procedures then known to be : 'a patch of

living flesh should be sliced off from the region of

the cheek and, after scarifying it with a knife, swiftly

adhered to the severed nose.' An ear, he also noted,

could be repaired in the same fashion.

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Once I learned the rudiments of my own life, I

became protective of my limbs : even that fearsome

plow and blade, driven by slow oxen, I regarded as my

own farm-field threat - let alone that saber and lance

from all those errant soldiers and wild warriors of the

heath. Now, as I said, I am in possession of, somehow,

this misplaced heart which does not stop beating.

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In 1557, Gaspar Tagliacozzi, of Bologna, understood

reconstructive surgery from a psychological perspective :

'We restore, repair, and make whole those parts which

nature has given but fortune has taken away; not so much

that they may delight the eye, but that they buoy up the

spirit and help the mind of the afflicted.' The Catholic Church

disagreed (oh yes, of course). It judged that he had been

tampering with the will of God and excommunicated him.

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I may toy with my mind, but leave my body alone; or at

least those parts that do not somehow, in their own way,

demand my attention. I sin with my prod then? I alter

the fates of this world with my unit? Who knows or

cares of that? And would you wish to join me here?

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Modern facial reconstructive surgery came about during

the First World War, to repair the devastating injuries

that resulted form mechanized warfare : The Third

London General Hospital opened a department, known

as the Tin Noses Shop, to build masks for soldiers

whose injuries could not be disguised by reconstruction.

'Extreme cases, generally, that plastic surgery

has, perforce, had to abandon.'

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I, for one, am sickened by men - the legislators and

liars (Note how liars is cleverly hidden in legislators)

who do these things, cause these things to happen -

all while their own asses are well-covered. A fine place

for a skin graft, that buttock, from an asshole to a face

for men so cheap and without value as to be not living.

My own heart - no longer misplaced - has now

just been found anew.