Brahe_Tycho4

Brahe's Nose

 Tycho was in a duel with Manderup Parsbjerg who was a fellow Danish nobleman. The duel was during the Christmas season in 1566 upon the times where he was studying at the University of Rostock in Rostock Germany. He was attending a dance at a professor’s house when he began arguing with Parsbjerg over a game of “paisley ale”. Since both had a few drinks in them, things got bad and they encountered in a duel and Tycho lost the bridge of his nose. In the aftermath of all this, Tycho became interested in medicine and alchemy. From the duel in the dark to the rest of his life, he was said to have worn a realistic replacement made from silver and gold. He used a type of paste to keep from the replacement from falling off. On June 24th 1901, green marks were found in Tycho’s skull suggesting that the false nose also had copper in it. “Having a copper nose would have been more comfortable and less heavy than a precious medal one”, some historians say.