Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition/Gasparo Tagliacozzi

TAGLIACOZZI, Gasparo (1546–1599), a surgeon of wide repute, was born at Bologna in 1546, and 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. He died at Bologna on November 7, 1599.

His principal work is entitled De Curtorum Chirurgia per Insitionem Libri Duo (Venice, 1597, fol.); it was reprinted in the following year under the title of Chirurgia Nova de Narium, Aurium, Labiorumque Defectu per Insitionem Cutis ex Humero, arte hactenus omnibus ignota, sarciendo (Frankfort, 1698, 8vo). The latter title sufficiently indicates the art which he professed of repairing nose, ears, and lips by a species of ingrafting of skin from the arm, that member being kept in apposition with the part to be repaired until such time as the semi-detached graft had formed its new vascular connexions. His Latinized name of Taliacotius is well known to the readers of Butler (Hudibras, i. 1), whose humorous representation of the nature of the Taliacotian art is, however, in some important particulars inaccurate.