Breast Augmentation: A Necessity rather Than a Luxury
In 1882 an American surgeon named William Steward Halsted popularized what’s now called the radical mastectomy. He didn’t think of the idea—one of the first written proposals for a mastectomy was published by a German surgeon in 1719. But it was Halsted who made invasive removal of breast tissue a mainstream part of cancer treatment, and his version of the surgery involved removing the entire breast, along with the nearby lymph nodes and both pectoral muscles. Removing that much tissue at that period of time, before many of the surgical techniques doctors are now familiar with were developed, often left women severely disfigured.
And with the removal of breasts, or pieces of them, came the demand for cosmetic replacements. In 1874 the U.S. Patent Office issued its first patent for a breast prosthetic, to a man named Frederick Cox. The prosthetic was made up of a cotton casing filled with an inflatable breast pad.
In the following years, women would come to dominate the world of breast replacement patents. In 1904, a woman named Laura Wolfe filed a patent for an “artificial breast pad.” Her version was solid, rather than inflatable, and in her patent she described the three things a woman wanted out of a replacement breast: comfort, appearance, and product quality.
Those three things are, largely, still what women want today, though many opt for surgical replacements rather than padded bras. Breast reconstruction is a highly technical and evolving field that employs techniques and technologies
