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 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, which was translated into Arabic in the 8th century, traveled further to Italy and was incorporated into the methods described by Branca. 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, 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, 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