Spare parts for humans

From left to right: prosthetic knight Goetz - iron hand; artificial hand made by Ambroise Paré; modern prosthesis (Eureka, L., 1976)

Artificial teeth and even jaws, glass eyes and prosthetic legs were known in the ancient world. With varying degrees of plausibility, they imitated the appearance of the corresponding part of the body, but such a multifunctional thing as a hand was not reproduced in antiquity - instead, a hook was sometimes attached to the stump.

The first prosthetic hand, in which the fingers could move slightly, was made in 1509 for the German knight Goetz von Berlichingen, nicknamed the Iron Hand. However, Ambroise Pare is rightfully considered the true father of prosthetics.

The son of a footman from Laval, Paré did not receive a medical education. He began his career as an apprentice to a barber, and therefore a surgeon. In 1536, Paré went to war as a doctor and nine years later gained widespread fame by revolutionizing field surgery. It was then believed that a gunshot wound produced a special poison in the body that could only be overcome with boiling alder resin; As a result of such treatment, many wounded died from painful shock. One day, Pare ran out of this resin during a battle, and he began, at his own risk, to treat his wounds with a homemade potion made from egg yolk, rose oil and turpentine. The effect exceeded all expectations: there was no poison, and the wounds healed. The second revolution was accomplished by Pare in the field of amputations. Then it was customary to cauterize the stump to stop bleeding - and he began to practice applying tourniquets. The fame of the humane doctor spread widely, and in 1554, despite the opposition of the conservative Sorbonne, he became a member of the Medical College of St. Cosmas.

Not knowing Latin, Paré popularized his methods of treatment in books written in French. This sacrilege, unheard of for a doctor, further quarreled him with official medicine, but at the same time raised his popularity even higher. Paré became the personal surgeon to successively several French kings: Henry II, Francis II, Charles IX and Henry III. Paré also had a lot of difficulties because of his religion: he was a Huguenot, and during the Night of St. Bartholomew in 1572, the doctor was saved only by the fact that the king hid him under his bed.

Having become a civilian from a military doctor, Pare did not abandon innovative experiments: he came up with the idea of ​​treating infected burns with onion broth; learned to operate on a hernia without castrating the patient, as was the case before; invented new splints for fractures, etc. But his main achievement was prosthetic arms.

At first, Pare decided that since it was impossible to keep up with nature, he needed to try to imitate the most important functions of the hand: for example, he made a prosthesis with a special holder for a pen for a scribe who had become disabled. However, towards the end of his life, the doctor was seized by a daring plan to reproduce the hand in all its complexity. Having carefully studied the anatomy of the human hand and relying on contemporary advances in mechanics, Paré built an artificial hand with fingers, each of which could move individually, driven by a complex system of microscopic gears and levers. Pare liked to say: “God heals - I only bandage the wounds.” However, in the field of prosthetics, he certainly entered into competition with the Creator: his prosthesis was closer to the current “myoelectric” miracles than to Captain Silver’s wooden leg.