Gaspare Tagliacozzi published his carefully documented procedures for nasal reconstruction at the end of the sixteenth century. However, almost all authorities in the succeeding century failed to give him credence. Although his name was widely known, his work became an object of scorn. James Cooke, author of one of the most popular English surgical textbooks of the seventeenth century, in an amusing and previously unnoted reference, adds to this denigration and helps to explain why nasal reconstruction became a subject of satire in England.