A wooden toe from Egyptian Thebes shows prosthetics are ancient
In 2000, pathologists examining a mummy from a cemetery near ancient Thebes found an artificial big toe of wood and leather, worn from use and dated to between 950 and 710 BC. When engineers built a replica in 2011, it let a wearer walk both barefoot and in Egyptian-style sandals.
Replacement body parts go back even further. An artificial eye, probably bitumen paste coated in a thin layer of gold, was buried with a woman at Shahr-i Shokhta in Iran around 3000 to 2800 BC. The Rigveda mentions a warrior queen, Vishpala, around 1200 BC, and Herodotus tells of Hegesistratus, a Greek seer who cut off his own foot to escape Spartan captors and then made a wooden substitute. Pliny recorded a Roman general, Marcus Sergius, who had an iron hand forged so he could hold a shield and fight again.
Later centuries brought more ingenuity. A man buried in a Longobard cemetery in northern Italy between the 6th and 8th centuries AD appears to have replaced his missing right hand with a knife, strapped on with leather that he tightened using his teeth. Medieval knights received devices to grip a shield or lance, while only the rich could afford aids for everyday life. By the 1500s functional artificial limbs made of iron, steel, copper and wood were appearing, including the refined arm of the German knight Gotz von Berlichingen.
Modern artificial arms fall into three families. Passive devices, such as cosmetic hands or hooks, have no active grip but help steady objects; about a third of upper-limb amputees worldwide use a passive hand. Body-powered arms run on a cable and harness looped around the opposite shoulder. Myoelectric arms carry batteries and sense tiny electrical signals from contracting muscles, translating them into grips.
Legs pose different challenges. Losing a leg above the knee is far harder than below it, because the knee is so complex, and such walkers spend roughly 80 per cent more energy than people with two intact legs. Newer designs combine hydraulics, carbon fibre, motors and microprocessors to give users more control. The word itself comes from Greek for addition or attachment.
Source: Prosthesis
