The Earliest Known Photo-Documented Rhytidoplasty and Mastopexy (1908): Jules Poullet and the 21st French Surgical Congress

Abstract Aesthetic surgery’s present popularity contrasts with its late-nineteenth-century beginnings in commercial “beauty institutes,” where limited, skin-only cosmetic procedures emerged outside the surgical mainstream and left little contemporaneous record. This article reassesses that early period and highlights a neglected primary source: Jules Poullet’s 1908 lecture at the 21st French Surgical Congress, published with photographic documentation. Poullet describes a case of pan-facial surgical rejuvenation via cervicofacial rhytidoplasty and upper and lower blepharoplasties, addressing periorbital, midface/temporal, and cervical regions. In the same lecture, he details a mastopexy with periareolar nipple–areola transposition and inframammary reduction, emphasizing scar concealment and appropriate nipple-areola repositioning. Taken together, these contemporaneous reports constitute the earliest known published, photographically documented accounts of both facelifting and mastopexy, shifting the commonly cited timelines by more than a decade. Poullet’s contributions, though a small part of his broader surgical career, anticipate core principles of modern facial and breast rejuvenation and clarify the early history of cosmetic surgery before it gained professional recognition.