• The Indians were some of the first to do nosejobs (I don’t know the exact dates, but thing 1700 or something). If the nose was harmed, say during battle or something, What they did was carve a bit out of the forehead, but leave it attached just above the nose. The flap of skin was then twisted and moved down over the nose area.
• The italians had a more complicated way of accomplishing the same thing. Upside was you did’t have a huge scar on your forehead en a twisted nose. Downside was the skin was taekn from the upper arm. So first the skin from the upperarm was cut loose, but still needed to stay connected through the upper arm because of blood circulation. The skin was then also attached to the nose to attach itself to the skin there. You can see how that puts you in somewhat of a weird position. So for at leats 2 weeks you were stuck with your upper arm pressed against your nose. They did invent slings to deal with this, but still… no fun.
• In the 1900’s the british were doing the first bit of botoxing, except there was no botox so they used parafin wax. Hot liquid wax was injected into the skin around the nose for instance and the ‘surgeon’ then had a few seconds to mold the nose until the wax settled. Nasty side effect: the wax started to wander through the body, creating bumps and dips in places they were not intended to be.

Thanks to fantastic BBC documentaire Blood and Guts: A History of Surgery.