Nature or Artifice? Grafting in Early Modern Surgery and Agronomy

Abstract

In 1597, Gaspare Tagliacozzi published a famous two-volume book on “plastic surgery.” The reconstructive technique he described was based on grafting skin taken from the arm onto the mutilated parts of the patient's damaged face – especially noses. This paper focuses on techniques of grafting, the “culture of grafting,” and the relationships between surgery and plant sciences in the sixteenth century. By describing the fascination with grafting in surgery, natural history, gardening, and agronomy the paper argues that grafting techniques were subject to delicate issues: to what extent it was morally acceptable to deceive the eye with artificial entities? and what was the status of the product of a surgical procedure that challenged the traditional natural/artificial distinction? Finally, this paper shows how in the seventeenth century grafting survived the crisis of Galenism by discussing the role it played in teratology and in controversies on the uses the new mechanistic anatomy.

Nature, Artifice, and Discovery in Descartes’ Mechanical Philosophy

“…9 If the second and third natures both involve cultivation, however, what is the difference between the two? As Paolo Savoia ( [21], pp. 74-75) notes, the distinguishing feature of discussions of third nature seems to be that the practice of gardeners brings forth new things-new varieties, new qualities-whereas second nature does not necessarily bring forth anything new, but only makes what was already there more fecund.…”

“…While the suggestion that art and nature combine to produce a third nature was perhaps most prominent in the literature on gardens and grafting techniques, it did not stay confined there. Savoia [21] documented how grafting provided the model for developing medical techniques in plastic surgery using skin grafts in the 16th century. The idea of a third nature was also transferred to the grottoes and fountain automata themselves, not just to the plants featured therein.…”

“…Was this art imitating, perfecting, or producing (new) nature? The surgeon and professor of anatomy and surgery at Bologna, Gaspare Tagliacozzi, in his De curtorum chirurgia per insitionem (1597), spoke of plastic surgery as "almost subjugating nature", and of its restorations being unable to succeed without subtle artificial care, while elsewhere acknowledging nature's superiority over art and the subordination of surgical practices to the laws of nature ( [25], p. 160: [21], 82). The sticking point was a reluctance to abandon the idea, as Savoia ([21], p. 82) puts it, "that Aristotle was right and that only nature had its internal principle of motion" despite "a surplus of human artistry that.…”

Vegetal Analogy in Early Modern Medicine: Generation as Plant Cutting in Sennert’s Early Treatises (1611–1619)

“…Plant grafting, in particular, raised the attention of scholars following the works of Giambattista Della Porta (1535-1615) on botany and natural magic. In this regard, Della Porta's theory and experiments concerning plant grafting inspired Gaspare Tagliacozzi on plastic surgery, William Gilbert on magnetic polarity and Francis Bacon on the prolongation of human life (Savoia 2017;Oppenheimer 1953;Rusu 2020). In the case of Sennert, it was the broader phenomenon of vegetative propagation that was at the center of his medical theory of generation in order to buttress his interpretation of matter-form and the vegetative soul.…”

Skills, Knowledge, and Status: The Career of an Early Modern Italian Surgeon

“…The second best paid was Tagliacozzi, who was younger than Sacchi and had less seniority, probably on account of his practicing the most spectacular surgical procedure: facial reconstruction through skin grafting. 31 Sacchi was an eminent figure in the city, practicing for a wealthy clientele and for a number of institutions; Rota never published anything but came from a good family and was very popular among students. The worst paid was always Giovanni Battista Cortesi, the true outsider.…”