Gaspare Tagliacozzi (his last name has also been spelled Taliacotius, Tagliacoze or Tagliacozzio; Bologna, March 1545 – Bologna, 7 November 1599) was an Italian
surgeon
In modern medicine, a surgeon is a medical professional who performs surgery. Although there are different traditions in different times and places, a modern surgeon usually is also a licensed physician or received the same medical training as ...
, pioneer of plastic and
reconstructive surgery
Reconstructive surgery is surgery performed to restore normal appearance and function to body parts malformed by a disease or medical condition.
Description
Reconstructive surgery is a term with training, clinical, and reimbursement implicat ...
.
Biography
Tagliacozzi was born in
Bologna
Bologna (, , ; egl, label= Emilian, Bulåggna ; lat, Bononia) is the capital and largest city of the Emilia-Romagna region in Northern Italy. It is the seventh most populous city in Italy with about 400,000 inhabitants and 150 different na ...
.
Tagliacozzi began his medical studies in 1565. He studied at the
University of Bologna
The University of Bologna ( it, Alma Mater Studiorum – Università di Bologna, UNIBO) is a public research university in Bologna, Italy. Founded in 1088 by an organised guild of students (''studiorum''), it is the oldest university in contin ...
under
Gerolamo Cardano
Gerolamo Cardano (; also Girolamo or Geronimo; french: link=no, Jérôme Cardan; la, Hieronymus Cardanus; 24 September 1501– 21 September 1576) was an Italian polymath, whose interests and proficiencies ranged through those of mathematician, ...
for medicine, Ulisse Aldrovandi for natural sciences and Julius Caesar Aranzi for anatomy. At the age of twenty-four, he earned his degree in
philosophy
Philosophy (from , ) is the systematized study of general and fundamental questions, such as those about existence, reason, knowledge, values, mind, and language. Such questions are often posed as problems to be studied or resolved. ...
and
medicine
Medicine is the science and practice of caring for a patient, managing the diagnosis, prognosis, prevention, treatment, palliation of their injury or disease, and promoting their health. Medicine encompasses a variety of health care pr ...
.
Career
He was then appointed professor of surgery and later was appointed professor of
anatomy
Anatomy () is the branch of biology concerned with the study of the structure of organisms and their parts. Anatomy is a branch of natural science that deals with the structural organization of living things. It is an old science, having i ...
. He taught at the
Archiginnasio of Bologna
The Archiginnasio of Bologna is one of the most important buildings in the city of Bologna; once the main building of the University of Bologna, it currently houses the Archiginnasio Municipal Library and the Anatomical Theatre.
In the heart of ...
. The amphitheater in which Tagliacozzi taught was severely damaged by American bombing during World War II. The theater was rebuilt and currently houses a wooden statue of Tagliacozzi. It is in this room that Tagliacozzi taught until 1595.
In 1568, two years before graduating, Tagliacozzi began practicing in the Hospital of Death, which was a sort of clinic for students since it was near the Archiginnasio. The hospital was run by a "Brotherhood of Death" whose job was to visit prisons and comfort those condemned to death. Through this brotherhood Tagliacozzi procured the bodies of executed prisoners for use in dissections. In his will, Tagliacozzi gave the responsibility of his burial to the brotherhood.
He improved on the work of the Sicilian Surgeon Gustavo Branca and his son Antonio (who lived in
Catania
Catania (, , Sicilian and ) is the second largest municipality in Sicily, after Palermo. Despite its reputation as the second city of the island, Catania is the largest Sicilian conurbation, among the largest in Italy, as evidenced also b ...
in the 15th century) and developed the so-called "Italian method" of
nasal reconstruction. His principal work is entitled ''De Curtorum Chirurgia per Insitionem '' (1597) ("On the Surgery of Mutilation by Grafting"). In this book, he described in great detail the procedures that had been carried out empirically by the Branca and Vianeo families of Sicily since the 15th century AD. The work has bestowed upon him the honor of being one of the first plastic surgeons and a quote from the book has become synonymous with plastic surgery. "We restore, rebuild, and make whole those parts which nature hath given, but which fortune has taken away. Not so much that it may delight the eye, but that it might buoy up the spirit, and help the mind of the afflicted."
Death and memorial service
Tagliacozzi died at Bologna on 7 November 1599 and was buried in the church of the nuns of St. John the Baptist as he had ordered in his will. On the 26th of the same month a solemn mass was held in the same church in his honor which was attended by all doctors collegiate. During the ceremony Muzio Piacentini, a colleague of Tagliacozzi, gave the funeral oration, while some of the other participants recited rhymes of praise
Brief history of the Italian method
This operation for nasal reconstruction (rhinoplasty) was developed in Italy due to the popularity of duelling with
rapier
A rapier () or is a type of sword with a slender and sharply-pointed two-edged blade that was popular in Western Europe, both for civilian use (dueling and self-defense) and as a military side arm, throughout the 16th and 17th centuries.
Impo ...
in the fifteenth, sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The inventors of the method are believed to be surgeons Gustavo Branca and his son Antonio, who lived c.1400 in Catania. Branca de Branca (the senior) used a skin flap from the cheek and years later, his son Antonio Branca used a flap raised from the arm.
It has been suggested that reconstructive surgical methods described in the
Sushruta Samhita
The ''Sushruta Samhita'' (सुश्रुतसंहिता, IAST: ''Suśrutasaṃhitā'', literally "Suśruta's Compendium") is an ancient Sanskrit text on medicine and surgery, and one of the most important such treatises on this subje ...
, which was translated into Arabic in the 8th century, traveled further to
Italy
Italy ( it, Italia ), officially the Italian Republic, ) or the Republic of Italy, is a country in Southern Europe. It is located in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea, and its territory largely coincides with the homonymous geographical ...
and was incorporated into the methods described by Branca.
[Lock etc., page 607] The technique was then taken up in Calabria during the sixteenth century by two brothers, surgeons Peter and Paul Boiano (also called Vianeo). This process was described by the great anatomist
Andreas Vesalius (1514-1564) but, he wrongly advised using the muscle and the skin of the arm to reconstruct the nose. The Italian method was criticized by
Gabriele Fallopio (1523-1562) as such a procedure could force the patient to remain with the arm immobilized for many months, and the result was not guaranteed as the skin would often detach. Tagliacozzi probably knew the method of Boiano through the description of
Leonardo Fioravanti. Tagliacozzi's method was practiced by
Fortunio Liceti, who mentions it in his ''De monstruorum nature causis et differentiis'' of 1616; by Henricus Moinichen in ''Observationes Medical chirurgicae'' of 1691; and by Thomas Feyens, surgeon to the
University of Louvain
A university () is an institution of higher (or tertiary) education and research which awards academic degrees in several academic disciplines. Universities typically offer both undergraduate and postgraduate programs. In the United States, the ...
, who had studied in Bologna with Tagliacozzi, in his work ''De praecipuis Artis Chirurgicae controversiis'' which was published posthumously in 1669. Use of this surgical innovation declined during the seventeenth century throughout Europe and the method of Tagliacozzi was actually forgotten, until it was rediscovered and applied in 1800 by the German surgeon
Karl Ferdinand von Graefe Karl may refer to:
People
* Karl (given name), including a list of people and characters with the name
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, whereupon it was used right up to the early twentieth century.
Notes
References
*
*Jerome Pierce Webster, Martha Teach Gnudi - ''Documenti inediti intorno alla vita di Gaspare Tagliacozzi'' in ''Studi e memorie per la storia dell'Università di Bologna'', 1935
*Pietro Capparoni, ''Profili bio-bibliografici di medici e naturalisti celebri Italiani, dal sec. XV al secolo XVIII'', volume 1, Istituto nazionale medico farmacologico "Serono", 1926
*Alfonso Corradi, ''Dell'antica autoplastica Italiana'' in ''Memorie del Regio Istituto lombardo di scienze e lettere. Classe di scienze matematiche e naturali'', volume 13, Milano, 1875
*''Sulla restituzione del naso'' - rapporto del Cavaliere Alberto De Schomberg, Giornale Arcadico di Scienze, Lettere ed Arti, Tomo VI, aprile - maggio - giugno 1820
*Ambrogio Bertrandi, ''Opere anatomiche e cerusiche'' - con note e supplementi dei chirurghi G. A. Penchienati e G. Brugnone, Tomo III, Torino, 1787
*Gaspare Tagliacozzi
''De curtorum chirurgia per insitionem'' Venezia, 1597
External links
Some places and memories related to Gasparo Tagliacozzi on Himetop - The History of Medicine Topographical Database
{{DEFAULTSORT:Tagliacozzi, Gasparo
1546 births
1599 deaths
Physicians from Bologna
16th-century Italian physicians
Italian plastic surgeons
16th-century Italian inventors
Medical educators