“In pity (trust me) I think no man
But would his leg or arm expose
To cut you out another nose”
ll. 4-6.
The Italian surgeon Gaspare Tagliacozzi published his procedure for the reconstruction of noses in De Curtorem Chirurgia Per Institionem (Venice, Italy: Robertum Meiettum, 1597). A nose-shaped flap of skin would be cut into the patient’s arm and grafted onto his or her face. To keep the arm in place it would be strapped to the patient’s head. After twenty days of this, the skin would be cut away from the arm and shaped into a nose.