Tycho Brahe wore a metal prosthetic nose for 35 years after a duel cost him the bridge of his original. Literary tradition long said the prosthesis was silver and gold. What did 20th-century forensic analysis of his exhumed remains actually find?
Tycho's body was exhumed in 1901 in Prague's Týn Church and again in 2010. The brass-copper finding is from the chemical analysis of the residual nasal-bridge metal traces. The silver-and-gold tradition came from 17th-century literary sources who were probably embellishing a more practical reality. The lead-poisoning theory is sometimes proposed for Tycho's 1601 death; modern analysis rejects it. He probably died of a bladder infection — produced, according to the contemporary story, by his refusal to leave a Prague banquet to relieve himself.
Read the full story →Tycho Brahe wore a metal prosthetic nose for the entire adult portion of his life after losing the original to a student duel in 1566. The Renaissance prosthetics tradition that produced his nose was a substantial European craft specialism that survived from the 15th to the 19th century before being substantively replaced by 20th-century plastic surgery.
Related questions
- Why did Tycho Brahe and Manderup Parsberg fight the duel that cost Tycho his nose?
- What did Manderup Parsberg — the cousin who cut off Tycho's nose in 1566 — go on to become?
- King Frederick II of Denmark built Tycho Brahe an extraordinary research observatory, paid for by approximately 1% of total Danish state revenue per year. Where?
- What did Tycho Brahe's observations of the Great Comet of 1577 prove?