The gold standard for managing burn injuries remains excision and autografting using
split-skin grafts. [17,11] This skin is either meshed (to obtain greater surface area) or unmeshed (obligatory for hands and faces), depending on the recipient site, but requires available donor sites.
It was not until the second half of the 19th century that, first, 'pinch grafts', small full-thickness pieces of skin, were introduced (Jaques Reverdin of Geneva, 1869), and then
split-skin grafts (Carl Thiersch of Leipzig, 1874) and that plastic surgery as we know it today was born.