In 1962, a young Texan housewife named Timmie Jean Lindsey was persuaded to become a guinea pig for a new operation. As the first woman to receive silicone breast implants, she has paved the way for more than two million women who have undergone surgical enhancements.

One of six children of an oil refinery worker, Timmie Jean was 14 when her mother died. One year later, the pretty teenager dropped out of school to marry a carpenter. After having three boys and three girls in nine years, she says that her husband began to squander his meager pay checks in bars.

She left him when she was 26 and began a new relationship with Fred Reyes, a Mexican immigrant who took her on holiday and, in what would become a life-changing moment, persuaded her to have red roses tattooed on each of her breasts. Timmie Jean said that she was ashamed of her impulsiveness.

Earning £19 a week from her job at an electronics factory, she qualified for free treatment at a charity clinic, the Jefferson Davis Hospital, where a friendly young plastic surgeon, Canadian-born Frank Gerow, offered to remove the roses with dermabrasion, a procedure in which the upper layers of the skin are removed.

When she returned for a check-up in the fall of 1961, male medical students joined him as he explained how he had been working with a colleague, Dr. Thomas Cronin, to develop an implant for women who had sagging breasts following multiple childbirths. He suggested that Timmie Jean should be the test case, the first woman in the world to undergo this delicate procedure.

Timmie Jean's surgery was performed in the spring of 1962.