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Chemistry in the service of beauty
Probably no one wants to grow old. That is why for a long time there has been a search for methods allowing to delay or mask the visible symptoms of the passage of time. More and more people also want to improve the shortcomings (real and sometimes imaginary) of beauty.
Sometimes quite drastic methods are used, involving surgical intervention. But in many cases it is quite enough to use a variety of chemical compounds. It also happens that the effect brings only a combination of these two methods.
Breast implants
The history of breast implants dates back to the end of the 19th century, when Vincenz Czerny, a surgeon practicing in Vienna, performed the first operation of this type by implanting a fragment of her own adipose tissue (a benign tumor consisting of adipose tissue) from another part of her body into a patient whose breast cancer had been removed earlier. The procedure was successful and the patient was able to quickly return to her normal activities (she was a singer). At the same time, another Austro-Hungarian surgeon, Robert Gersuny, began experimenting with breast augmentation using injections of paraffin and petroleum jelly. Gersuny’s reasoning made sense — both substances are chemically inert under ordinary conditions. The initial results were quite satisfactory — the breasts gained their proper shape and…
