Limb Prosthetics Today

1 Technical Director, Committee on Prosthetics Research and Development, National Academy of Sciences—National Research Council, 2101 Constitution Avenue, N.W., Washington, D.C. 20418 Loss of limb has been a problem as long as man has been in existence. Even some prehistoric men must have survived crushing injuries resulting in amputation, and certainly some children were born with congenitally deformed limbs with effects equivalent to those of amputation. In 1958 the Smithsonian Institution reported the discovery of a skull dating back about 45,000 years of a person who, it was deduced, must have been an arm amputee, because of the way his teeth had been used to compensate for lack of limb. Leg amputees must have compensated partly for their loss by the use of crude crutches and, in some instances, by the use of peg legs fashioned from forked sticks or tree branches (Figs. 1 and 2). The earliest known record of a prosthesis being used by man was made by the famous Greek historian, Herodotus. His classic "History," written about 484 B.C., contains the story of the Persian soldier, Hegistratus, who, when imprisoned in stocks by the enemy, escaped by cutting off part of his foot, and replaced it later with a wooden version. A number of ancient prostheses have been displayed in museums in various parts of the world. The oldest known is an artificial leg unearthed from a tomb in Capua in 1858, thought to have been made about 300 B.C., the period of the Samnite Wars. Constructed of copper and wood, the Capua leg was destroyed when the Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons was bombed during