According to Ohio-based plastic surgeon Dr. Brian Dorner, one prevalent misconception about his field is where it gets its name. As he explained in a blog post for his practice, people tend to assume we call it “plastic” surgery simply because breast implants are made from plastic. 

据俄亥俄州的一位整形外科医生Brian Dorner介绍，关于整形外科，一个常见的误解就与这个行业的名字来源有关。Brian在博客中介绍自己的工作时表示，人们通常会认为我们之所以将整形手术称为“plastic”surgery，仅仅是因为乳房填充物就是用塑料做的。

Actually, breast implants are made using silicone shells and are filled with either saline or silicone gel. But not everybody agrees that silicone even counts as a type of plastic: It’s more of a cross between rubber and plastic. But the bigger hole in this purported origin story is that the term plastic surgery predates the invention of breast implants by several decades. In fact, it predates the invention of synthetic plastics, too.

实际上，乳房填充物是用硅胶外壳制作的，里面填充的是盐水或矽胶凝胶。但是很多人认为硅甚至算不上是一种塑料：硅更介乎于塑料和橡胶之间。但是，这个传说的起源故事有一个更大的漏洞，那就是plastic surgery这个词要比乳房填充物早数十年出现。事实上，这个词比人工塑料发明的时间还要早。

The word plastic derives from the Latin plasticus and the Greek plastikos, meaning “fit for molding, capable of being molded into various forms; pertaining to molding,” per the Online Etymology Dictionary. When plastic first appeared in writing in the late 16th century—spelled plasticke—it referred to the art of molding or sculpting, typically with clay or wax. By the 17th century, people started using it as a term for the artist who did the sculpting, and as a way to describe their finished artwork. Plastic (plus plastique, plastick, and other variations) also became an adjective, describing any malleable material that could be molded.

根据在线词源学字典的解释，塑料这个词来自于拉丁语plasticus和希腊语plastikos，表示“适合成型，能被塑造成各种形状；与成型有关。”塑料首次在文字中出现是在16世纪末期，当时的写法是plasticke-指成型或雕塑（通常用黏土或蜡）艺术。到了17世纪，人们开始将plastic一词用于进行雕塑的艺术家以及用于描述他们完成了的艺术作品。Plastic（除了plastique，plastick 以及其他变体）也变成了一个形容词，用于描述任何可以塑造的易成型材料。

The first written record of the term plastic surgery comes from an 1837 issue of the medical journal The Lancet, which called it “a branch of surgery in which alone the operating surgeon becomes a real artist.” In other words, plastic didn’t just refer to the fact that the surgeon was working with very moldable materials; it also invoked the longstanding artistic connotations of the word. So did related terms such as rhinoplasty (nose reconstruction), which first started showing up in print back in the 1820s. The Encyclopedia of America described it as “the art of restoring the nose.”

Plastic surgery这个词作为文字首次出现是在1837年期的医学期刊《柳叶刀》，在期刊中，这个词被称为是“外科手术的一个分支，在这个分支内，进行手术的外科医生是一位真正的艺术家。”换句话说，塑料并不仅仅是指外科医生使用非常易成型的材料；它还包含了由来已久的艺术的含义。因此，相关词语，比如rhinoplasty（鼻修复）首次在19世纪20年代在出版物中出现。《美国大百科全书》将其形容为“恢复鼻子的艺术。”

While plastic surgery didn’t get its modern title until the 19th century, people had been experimenting with bodily remodeling for at least a few thousand years before then. In Egypt circa 1200 BCE, for example, Ramses II got a postmortem nose job.

尽管plastic surgery直到19世纪才拥有一个现代化的表达，人们至少在数年前之前就一直尝试进行身体的重塑。比如，大约公元前1200年前，在埃及，拉美西斯二世就在死后接受了鼻部修复。

原文来源：Mental Floss

翻译&编辑：上海译锐翻译