Context: Recently, the Union Minister of Health & Family Welfare has dedicated the newly constructed Burns and Plastic Surgery Block of AIIMS, New Delhi to Sushruta: The Father of Plastic Surgery.

Who was Sushruta?

• Sushruta (c. 7th or 6th century BCE) was a physician in ancient India known today as the “Father of Indian Medicine” and “Father of Plastic Surgery” for inventing and developing surgical procedures.
• His work on the subject, the Sushruta Samhita (Sushruta’s Compendium) is considered the oldest text in the world on plastic surgery and is highly regarded as one of the Great Trilogy of Ayurvedic Medicine (the other two being the Charaka Samhita, which preceded it, and the Astanga Hridaya, which followed it).
• Sushruta is believed to have lived in Kashi.

Contributions of Sushruta

• The Sushruta Samhita documented the aetiology of more than 1,100 diseases, the use of hundreds of medicinal plants, and instructions for performing scores of surgical procedures – including three types of skin grafts and reconstruction of the nose.
• Sushruta’s treatise provides the first written record of a forehead flap rhinoplasty, a technique still used today to reconstruct a nose.
• He was one of the first people in human history to suggest that a student of surgery should learn about the human body and its organs by dissecting a dead body.
• In the eighth century CE, Sushruta Samhita was translated into Arabic as ‘Kitab Shah Shun al-Hindi’ and ‘Kitab-I-Susurud.’
• The first European translation of Sushruta Samhita was published by Hessler in Latin and in German by Muller in the early 19th century; the complete English literature was done by Kaviraj Kunja Lal Bhishagratna in three volumes in 1907 in Calcutta.