The Italian contribution to plastic surgery.

The birth of what we now call plastic surgery dates to the fifteenth century, when the diffusion of nose amputation as a punishment was paralleled by the blossoming of surgical procedures for nose reconstruction. The relationship between the Eastern and the Western world fostered to spreading of the so-called Indian method, based on the use of a forehead flap. This technique was first introduced in Italy by the Branca family from Catania, Sicily. Eventually, a member of this family switched to a different approach to nose reconstruction using a cutaneous arm flap. This «Italian» method was followed and theorized by Tagliacozzi in Bologna