The Baronio Sheep

Plastic Surgery Research Council

Guiseppe Baronio and the Sheep

Baronio, G., Degli Innesti Animali, Stamperia e Fonderia del Genio, Milan, 1804.

In the McDowell Zeis Index it says:
"The book also contains some the author's own experiments in transposing two pieces of skin in a ram, which healed after they had been separated for 18 minutes or even one hour, while skin grafts exchanged between a cow and a mare were unsuccessful."

In Plastic Surgery Research Council - Thirty-five Year History (full text now available online) Peter Randall writes about the 10th Annual Meeting at the University of Kansas and says:
"At this meeting, we formally accepted Dick Stark's rendition of Baronio's sheep as the official emblem."

From Bruce Klitzman, PhD (7/28/99):
I noticed your request for information on "Baronio's Sheep". In 1986, I had a Duke medical student, Jack Gelman, who did his research project with me and wrote up most of the following bit of history regarding the famous "sheep".

In Italy, a charlatan called Gambacurta, showed publicly how she could cut pieces of skin off of herself, replace them and they would live; this was reported by D.A. Sancassani in 1731. Italian physiologist, Giuseppe Baronio (1759-1811), was inspired by knowledge of this demonstration and carried out a series of successful autografts of sheep skin in 1804 (Degli innesti animali). Baronio removed pieces of sheep skin 12.5 by 7.5 cm, replaced them 80 minutes after excision, and found that the skin survived. Baronio's work pre-dated a reported success in man by thirteen years (1817).

The Royal College of Surgeons of England possesses a manuscript belonging to Astley Cooper with the following notes concerning a young man. [He was] admitted to Guy's hospital on 9th April, 1817, with a diseased thumb which Mr. Cooper amputated between phalanges. He then cut off a healthy piece of integument from the amputated part and applied it to the base of the stump where he secured it by means of adhesive slips. The graft was completely successful, and this was the first recorded certain success of human autografts.

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