ARTIFICIAL LIMES.

Auckland Star, Volume XVIII, Issue 69, 23 March 1887, Page 4

ARTIFICIAL LIMES.

The Ai-elueolosy of Orthopaedic Surgery.

—A Rare Roller.

Tue history of medicine is all but silent on orthopedic surgery. And yet the Greeks and Romans, who, as archaeology has shown, haa anticipated much of modern dentistry, cannot have been without artificial substitutes for limbs lost in the vicissitudes of peace and war. Herodotua tells us of a captive who amputated his foot to free himself from the shackles, and thus escaped to his friends, who replaced his limb by a wooden one. The elder Pliny (Nat Hist, vil, 28, cd. Mayhoff) records the case of M. Sergius, greatgrandfather of Catiline, who lost hia right hand in his second campaign, was wounded twenty three times in two campaigns, and and thua had the complete use of neither hand nor foot. Twice made prisoner by Hannibal, ho escaped after twenty months spent in ohains. He fought four battles with hia left hand only, and then made himeelf a hand of iron, which he fastened on to fight with, and, thus accoutred, raised the eiege of Cremona, protected Placentio, and took twelve camps of the enemy in Gaul. Similar substitutes for amputated arms or legs must bavo been in use even before the time of Sergius ; so at least we may infer from the treasure-trove turned up at Capua in 1885, in a turfa grave. Among the contents of this tomb wa3 an artificial leg, made of bronze, wood and iron, the skeleton being entire, save the bones represented by the artificial limb. Thia (probably unique) rolic is now in the museum of the Royal College of Surgeons of London, and ia thus officially described : " Roman artificial leg. The artificial limb accurately represents the form of the le^. It is made with piecea of ;hin bronze, fastened by bronze nails to a wooden core. Two iron bars, having holes at their free ends, are attached to the upper extremity of the bronze. A quadrilateral piece of iron, found near the position of the foot, ia thought to have given strength to it. There waa no trace of the fact, and tho wooden core had nearly all crumbled away. Tho skeleton had its waist surrounded by a belt of sheet bronze, edged with small rivets, probably used to fasten a leather

lining. Three painted vasca (rod flgureu on a black ground) lay at the feet of tho skeleton. The vases belonged to a rather advanced period of the decline in art (about 300 be.)." Commenting on the above, General H. H. Maxwell says: "It is important to add, from other sources, that tho upper third [of the leg waa hollow, while the tower two-thirds were filled with wood."