Background
Gasparo Tagliacozzi was born in Bologna on March 1546.
Surgeon professor of surgery and anatomy
Gasparo Tagliacozzi was born in Bologna on March 1546.
He studied at that university under Cardan, taking his degree in philosophy and medicine at the age of twenty-four.
He was appointed professor of surgery and afterwards of anatomy, and achieved notoriety at least, and the fame of a wonder-worker.
Tagliacozzi improved the reconstructive surgery methods that had been developed in Italy in the 1400s and 1500s to repair noses which had been amputated, usually in war. The ‘Italian method’ took skin from the arm, using specially designed instruments to make the correct shape. Then the flap of skin from the arm, called a pedicle, was attached to the nose. The patient's arm was bandaged in the raised position for about 20 days or until the skin of the arm had attached itself to the nose. The pedicle was then severed from the arm and after 14 days the attached skin was shaped so that it resembled the nose.
He died at Bologna on the November 7, 1599.