Rhinoplasty and the Nose in Early Modern British Medicine and Culture

(Hardback)

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Challenging histories of plastic surgery that posit a complete disappearance of Gaspare Tagliacozzi's rhinoplasty operation after his death in 1599, Rhinoplasty and the nose in early modern British medicine and culture traces knowledge of the procedure within the early modern British medical community, through to its impact on the nineteenth-century revival of skin-flap facial surgeries.

The book explores why such a procedure was controversial, and the cultural importance of the nose, offering critical readings of literary noses from Shakespeare to Laurence Sterne. Medical knowledge of the graft operation was accompanied by a spurious story that the nose would be constructed from flesh purchased from a social inferior, and would drop off when that person died. The volume therefore explores this narrative in detail for its role in the procedure's stigmatisation, its engagement with the doctrine of medical sympathy, and its unique attempt to commoditise living human flesh.

Reviews

'this is a carefully researched and convincing book about the multi-layered reception of one controversial surgical procedure. [...] this book is recommended not only to historians of medicine and the body but also to scholars interested in early modern British literary history and popular culture, queer theory and the history of sexuality.'
Social History of Medicine

Author Bio

Emily Cock is a Leverhulme Early Career Research Fellow in the Department of History at Cardiff University