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Warning, this episode contains descriptions of nose reconstruction.

If you are squeamish, please listen for our heads up within the episode.

You're listening to Shortwave from NPR.

Hey, Shortwaiver is Regina Barber here.

As a reporter and a podcast host, I'm used to asking questions, and sometimes they're weird questions,

and that's okay. But I'm not as used to being on the receiving end of these weird questions.

And when I first met Daniel Cohen, he asked me a question that I've never been asked before.

If someone, not me, were to come along and cut your nose off and it were to fall on the

floor, and then a dog came in and ate it, we can fix that. The question is, for how long have we

been able to fix that? Daniel is a professor of bioengineering at Princeton. He specializes

in regenerative medicine,

so reconstructing, repairing, or regenerating, damaged, or missing tissue. And he says he asks

a lot of his students this question. And most bioengineers assume the answer is more like

20 to 50 years. I thought maybe 100, 500 years tops.

But Daniel told me, according to medical history, humans have known how to medically

reconstruct noses with living tissue for thousands of years.

The answer as far as we can tell goes back around 2,500 years ago to India.

And Daniel says, usually this gets a reaction from the audience.

Disbelief, excitement, confusion.

...