Complete Record - Heirs of Hippocrates No. 143.1

ALESSANDRO BENEDETTI (ca. 1450-1512) Alexandri Benedicti, physici, Anatomice, siue, Historia corporis humani ; ejusdem Collectiones medicinales, seu Aforismi Simon Du Bois 1527 167, [1] leaves (the last leaf blank) 11 cm. (8vo)

Anatomice, sive Historia Corporis Humani (Anatomy, or the History of the Human Body), first printed in Venice in 1502, was very popular and influential at the time. Of the many topics treated in the book, one is of special interest to plastic surgeons, i.e., the description of nasal reconstruction by means of a skin flap taken from the arm. The procedure is the same as the one the Branca family practiced in Sicily in the middle of the fifteenth century. The Brancas kept secret the operation and never published it. Alessandro Benedetti played an important role in the history of plastic surgery because he first reported in the Western surgical literature the procedure of nasal repair, later called the "Italian" method, almost 100 years before Tagliacozzi's publication in 1597.

See Related Record(s): 142 143 193

Cited references: Durling 522

John Martin M.D. Endowment