Women have always wanted to change their breasts.
We have previously discussed Dr. Czerny’s pioneering work in the field of breast enlargement surgery. After Dr. Czerny had completed his first breast enlargement surgery by placing adipose tissue and replacing it in the breast there was a belief in the medical community that breast enlargement was a possibility. The biggest hurdle was what to use. Dr. Czerny had taken tissue from the adipose region and put it back from where the tumor was taken from; all in one surgery. The next wave of breast enlargement came in the 1940s when doctors began taking muscle from the chest wall and rotating it into the breast itself to make it seem fuller. This was a dangerous surgery because it messed with the very compact pectoral areas of the chest wall and this caused great pain and a very long recovery time. The next push in the breast enlargement field came in the 1960s and 70s when scientists and doctors began using synthetic materials to implant into the breast to make it fuller and more shapely.
Doctors and scientists used ivory, ground up rubber, glass balls, cartilage from an ox, polyethylene chips, polyether foam, tape, strips wound into a ball, polyester and Teflon-silicone prostheses. Some of these foreign substances were slightly successful and some of them were just downright dangerous. All of this information shows just how long and how hard women, scientists and doctors have tried to come up with just the right solution to give women a larger and shapelier breast that they can feel good about.
It wasn’t until the late 1960s that doctors came up with the first silicone-gel filled breast bag and also bags filled with saline. These bags have come a long way to the ones used today and are much less likely to break or go bad. Certainly, many women remember the silicone scare of the 1990s when it was revealed that many of the gel packs had leaked into the women’s breasts and then the gel was absorbed into the body. This absorption gave women a higher risk of cancer and set back the breast surgery business.