The Tech Behind: Prosthetics

Posted 07/26/2011 at 1:49pm | by Seamus Bellamy

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The most concise definition of a prosthetic is any device that replaces a missing body part, and whether you know it or not, prosthetics are a part of our daily lives. From banal applications such as dental crown, to complicated devices which compensate for a life altering injury sustained in an accident or enable an individual who lacks a fully functional body part due to an accident of birth, prosthetics are an awesome technology that the majority of us are fortunate enough to be able to take for granted. 

The earliest mention of prosthetic devices date back to the Egyptian New Kingdom era (between 1600 BC and 1100  BC), with archeological evidence such as a wooden toe attached to the foot of a mummified Egyptian corpse proving that ancient man wasn’t any more down with living without all of his physical faculties than we are today. Around the same time that Pompeii was devoured by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius, there was said to be a Roman General bopping around with an iron arm he commissioned from a blacksmith so that he could still hold a shield during combat.

Despite these impressive feats of early ingenuity, prosthetic devices as we understand them today didn’t really start coming into their own until the 14th  and 15th centuries during the Renaissance, when the development of man-made body parts underwent—let’s just call it what it is—a renaissance.  At that time, functional prosthetics were only obtainable by the most affluent of people, and were most often made of wood, steel, copper and iron. The most complex of their devices sought to not only replace a missing appendage, but in some cases, primitively mimic its functionality.

A confirmed example of this technology was used by Götz von Berlichingen: a German mercenary who saw active combat in the mid 1400s. von Berlichingen was said to have had a pair of iron hands that could be articulated into various positions through the tightening or loosening of springs contained within the prosthetics. This made von Berlichingen capable of using a fork, or when the situation warranted, swinging a sword.

In the 1500’s, Ambroise Paré, Royal Surgeon to a number of monarchs of the day, pushed prosthetic technology forward once again when he invented a wooden leg and foot prosthesis the user attached to his body with a leather harness and featured a knee joint that could be unlocked so that the wearer could in effect, kneel. It could be argued that innovations like this and the ones seen in von Berlichingen’s hands were the progenitors of the modern limb prosthetic technologies that millions of people benefit from today—technologies that go beyond providing a specific function—such as holding a shield in battle—instead, offering their users a tool that can be applied to multiple applications every day of their lives.