You’d think that vanity is a new invention, but you’d think wrong. George Washington had his chin emphasized in official portraiture because his missing teeth and weak jaw made him look less like a leader. Even before then, royal portraits and the like were always a bit touched up to gloss over whatever the royal figure’s particular flaws might have been. Even medical procedures for looks correction date back farther than though. A medical text about nose jobs from 1597 was recently sold at auction for $17,000 (or 11,000 pounds).
“It’s a wonderful and rare book. The techniques were clearly well-thought of at the time, yet all was forgotten following Tagliacozzi’s death,” says the book’s former owner, Chris Albury.
The text, De Curtorum Chirurgia Per Insitionem (or Surgery of Defects by Implantations), was written by physician Gaspare Tagliacozzi well before the invention of modern surgery. The purpose wasn’t merely for cosmetic reasons, either; Tagliacozzi cut his teeth restoring the noses and facial features of soldiers who had been wounded on the battlefields of Europe.
Tags: surgery, plastic surgery, book on plastic surgery from 1597, surgery book from 1597, nose jobs from 1597, nose job book from 1597 auctions for 000, De Curtorum Chirurgia Per Insitionem, Surgery of Defects by Implantations, Gaspare Tagliacozzi, Dominic Winter Auction House, Chris Albury
