Amputation of foot and leg with examples of prostheses
Given that we largely only need our legs for balance and ambulation, and that we’re (usually) perfectly capable of balancing with one leg, making functional prostheses for the lower extremities was much simpler than making functional arms and hands. Heck, even a peg leg could work fine in most situations, at least if it was fitted well.
Most prostheses in the early-to-mid 19th century were focused more on aesthetics than on true usability. They looked like the real thing, and could easily be masked by pants and shoes, but they were often clunky, heavy, and ill-fitted (causing sores at the articulation point). Some doctors were trying to work on functional knees for prosthetic legs by that point, but those were even worse to use, as the “joint” was difficult to control.
Traité complet de l'anatomie de l'homme comprenant la medecine operatoire, par le docteur Marc Jean Bourgery. Nicolas Henri Jacob (artist), 1831.
I actually wrote a paper on prostheses last year. The reason so many lower limb ones were too heavy and painful was because they were either solid or the structure was weight bearing along the outside. Once prostheses began being made with a central pylon (mimicking the organic structure of the leg) this issue was mostly gone.
Thanks for reminding me about this! There are a number of books from the 1930s-60s available on archive.org that address this issue directly, at least on the trans-tibial (dealing with the leg below the knee) scale. Trans-femoral (above the knee) stuff seems to have taken longer to be truly ergonomic, from what I’ve seen, but I’d be interested in the input of anyone who’s dealt with or researched this sort of thing.
Prosthetics are one of my favorite fields of medical technology - they seem super intuitive to a lot of people (just make something that looks like the limb, right?), but they’re exactly the opposite.
It takes so much time and research and innovation to make something that really lets someone without a certain limb function as if they have all four limbs, especially when they’re so used to not having that limb that they’ve learned to compensate (even back in the 17th century they had people with tetra-amelia [born without any fully-formed limbs] and dysmelia [born with one or more dysfunctional limbs]) and who could do almost everything an average four-limbed person could do.
Thomas Schweicker had small feet and malformed legs and no arms, but he was noted in 1615 to have “the best calligraphy around” and to be “keeping the dying art of illumination alive”.
