ABSTRACT
Historiography on pain forms a relatively new and expanding body of literature. Twentieth-century French surgeon René Leriche wrote about a “living pain” experienced outside of the laboratory and impossible to be reduced to a universal code of neural impulses. Gaspare Tagliacozzi made surgical pain a matter of social honor and masculine identity in unprecedented ways, playing with early modern conceptions of surgical pain that included both fear of expected pain and reaction to inflicted pain. The chapter highlights Tagliacozzi’s strategies in replying to accusations of performing a much too painful procedure. Surgical technology that would eventually be re-purposed by Tagliacozzi was already in place by the sixteenth century, like metallic cannulas to be inserted in the nostrils and rounded forceps to operate on the interior parts of the nose with swiftness and finesse. Tagliacozzi claimed that the most acute pain was caused by the artificial position of the arm that had to be fixated to the face for three weeks.
