tsi 



ARTIFICIAL LIMBS. 



ARTILLERY. 



683 



All those numerous examples of skill, which may more fittingly be 

 called surgical operations than anatomical contrivances, we have nothing 

 to do with here ; but when a mechanician undertakes to supply a sub- 

 stitute for an arm, a hand, or a leg, we have as much right to claim i( 

 as a proof of constructive skill as a loom or a lathe, a plough or a clock. 

 And here we mark how quickly a newly-discovered substance becomes 

 brought within the scope of the operations. Is it caoutchouc ? Then 

 will the artificial leg-maker find out where to use it with advantage. 

 Is it gutta percha ? Then will he soon see where the combined elas- 

 ticity and toughness of that remarkable substance are likely to be 

 valuable. Accordingly, we find that many different materials are 

 employed, either to give shape to the artificial hand, arm, or leg, or to 

 give smoothness and softness to the surface, or to form the joints for 

 the requisite movements. Wood, leather, caoutchouc, gutta percha, 

 cork, iron levers, steel springs all are employed ; and much ingenuity 

 is displayed in arranging the materials. 



Sir George Cayley, who exhibited much inventive talent in various 

 mechanical contrivances, made many trials to produce an artificial hand 

 which should be less costly than those ordinarily constructed. He 

 made the ' Mechanics' Magazine ' the medium of communicating his 

 experience in this matter. His first attempt was in 1845. The son of 

 one of his tenants having lost a hand by accident, Sir George contrived 

 a substitute which in many ways lessened the severity of the privation. 

 The movement* of this instrument are derived from the stump ; a light 

 frame-work fixes the apparatus to the upper part of the arm, and a 

 lever connects this frame-work with the artificial hand. The arm is 

 placed within padded rings of metal, which are connected by two long 

 steel bars hinged at the elbow. When the wearer moves his arm by 

 the usual action of the elbow-joint, he shifts a small metal bar near the 

 wrist of the machine, which works two cog-wheels acting on each 

 other ; and these cog-wheels bring two steel springs together so as to 

 enable them to grasp an object something in the manner of a thumb 

 and fore-finger. The wheels and springs may either be left exposed, in 

 the metallic state, or may be padded so as to represent a thumb and 

 finger. It was found that although this artificial hand could be turned 

 round a little way, it could not be turned so much as a quarter of a 

 circle from its horizontal towards a perpendicular grasp ; and there 

 was, at the same time, no movement equivalent to the usual bending 

 of the wrist, which gives so great a variety of positions to the natural 

 hand. He therefore contrived a new arrangement of mechanism at the 

 wrist, so as to superadd these two movements to those before pos- 

 ewed by the apparatus ; this involved an increase of rather delicate 

 mechanism. 



At one of the soirees given by the President of the Royal Society 

 in 1845, the boy for whom Sir George Cayley made the artificial hand 

 was introduced, and Prince Albert " shook " him by his mechanical 

 appendage. The hand had only one finger worked by the mechanism ; 

 but there were the proper number of cork fingers united side by side, 

 and fixed to one broad thin steel plate, jointed, and covered with con- 

 tinuous leather, stitched down to mark the distinction of the fingers 

 under it. But where a more expensive apparatus can be afforded, and 

 the appearance of having a real hand in sought for, the thin steel 

 plate can be separated into digits, though united at the base as in a 

 common hand, and jointed at the proper place* in due proportion to 

 each finger. 



In another form of artificial hand, made by Sir G. Cayley, in 1847, 

 there is a case or sheath, into which the stump of the arm is introduced. 

 A spiral spring is fixed at one end to this sheath, and at the other to a 

 bent lever ; while the middle of the lever is connected with the 

 mechanism of rods which move the artificial thumb and fingers. In 

 this arrangement, the wearer uses his sound hand to work his artificial 

 hand. He precises a little button which is connected with the bent 

 lever ; by pressing this towards the wrist, the fingers and thumb open 

 to receive any object they may be intended to grasp ; and when this 

 pressure from the other hand is taken off, the grasp takes effect, with- 

 out further effort, till released by a contrary movement. The 

 mechanism is very simple, and is attached wholly to the lower arm, 

 near the stump. But as the sound Hand must be taken from anything 

 else it has to perform, at the time the artificial hand is thus put to 

 work ; and as it may on other accounts be inconvenient to work the 

 apparatus in this way, Sir George invented a very ingenious means of 

 working the hand by the movement of the upper arm or shoulder- 

 joint. 



One of Sir George Cayley's contrivances, made by Mr. Buckingham, 

 was shown at the Great Exhibition of 1851 ; as was also an ingenious 

 artificial hand invented by Major Little of Woolwich. 



M. Magcndie described to the Paris Academy of Sciencea, in 1845, 

 an artificial arm, invented by M. Van Petersen. A sort of stays are 

 fixed round the breast of the person ; and from these are brought 

 cords made of catgut, which act upon the articulations, according to 

 the motion given to the natural stump. The apparatus was found 

 to be very effective. It was tried (among other patients) on an invalid 

 soldier, who had lost both arms in the wars of the empire, retaining 

 only the stumps. With the aid of two of the artificial arms, he 

 was able to perform many of the functions which had hitherto been 

 performed for him. M. Magendie considered this contrivance to 

 be the best substitute for a natural arm which had till then been 

 introduced. 



A curious example of mechanical anatomy is exhibited in Count 

 Dunin's ' Model Man,' first made public in this country in 1851. It is 

 intended to illustrate the different proportions of the human figure, 

 and admits of being expanded from the size of the Apollo Belvidere to 

 that of a colossal statue. The external part of the figure consists of a 

 series of steel and copper plates sliding upon each other, and kept in 

 contact by screws, nuts, and spiral springs. Attached to these plates, 

 and within the figure, are metal slides, having projecting pins at their 

 extremities ; these pins are inserted in curved grooves cut in circular 

 steel plates the curvature of the grooves being so arranged that when 

 the steel plates are put in revolution by a train of wheels and screws, 

 the slides belonging to each particular part of the figure are expanded 

 or contracted in correct proportion. The elongation of the figure is 

 accomplished either by sliding metal tubes, provided with racks, and 

 acted upon by a combination of wheels, or by screws aud slides, as 

 found most applicable for each particular part. Besides these sym- 

 metrical adjustments, each part of the figure has an independent aud 

 separate adjustment, by which it may be thrown out of symmetry, 

 and made to represent the deformities or peculiarities of form in any 

 individual. So intricate is the mechanism to produce all these move- 

 ments, that the figure comprises 7000 plates, springs, slides, wheels, 

 tubes, nuts, screws, and other pieces of metal. This remarkable piece 

 of mechanism could easily be made applicable in the artist's studio ; 

 but the inventor seems to have had more especially in view the use 

 of the model to assist in measuring and making clothes for large 

 numbers of men, such as an army the different sizes and shapes of 

 the men being imitated by the model. 

 ARTIFICIAL STONE. [CEMENT.] 



ARTILLERY, a word believed to be of French origin. Menage 

 derives it from the 'old word artiller, to fortify. Vossius (' De Vitiis 

 Sermonis,' lib. iii. cap. 1) says the ancient word, instead of Artilleria, 

 was Arrualia, from Areus, a bow ; the earliest military engines of this 

 description having arisen -out of improvements upon the bow and 

 arrow. Artillery, in ita most general signification, implies all kinds of 

 missiles with the engines used in propelling them. Since the appli- 

 cation of gunpowder to projectiles, it has chiefly been confined to 

 large ordnance, or cannon, mortars, howitzers, &c., to which rockets 

 are now to be added, and includes their 'ammunition, appurtenances, 

 and means of transport, as also the men and officers employed in 

 working them. 



It was long after the nations of the east had formed war into a 

 science, that military engines, such as are comprised in the term 

 artillery, were invented. The earliest were, in all probability, those for 

 casting stones of prodigious weight. Of Uzziah (B.C. 1000), 2 Chron. 

 xxvi. 15, it is said, " And he made in Jerusalem engines, invented by 

 cunning men, to be upon the towers and upon the bulwarks, to shoot 

 arrows and great stones withal. And his name spread far abroad ; for 

 lie was marvellously helped till he was strong." 



Among ancient engines of artillery, the Batteriny-ram has been 

 usually included, though it certainly is not embraced in the ordinary or 

 in any other definition of that word. Pliny, whose authority in such a 

 matter is small, says it was invented at the siege of Troy ; but Homer 

 makes no mention of it. The first notice of this engine is probably in 

 Ezekiel, where the prophet speaks of a feigned siege of Jerusalem as a 

 sign for the Jews (iv. 2) : " set battering rams against it round about ; " 

 and again (xxi. 22), " appoint battering-rams against the gate." Ezekiel 

 ived about 590 years B.C. The next mention of the battering-ram in 

 n the Peloponnesian war, B.C. 429 (Thucyd. ii. 76) ; and we are certain 

 that it was used a century afterwards at the siege of Motya by Diony- 

 siuB the Elder. The ram was sometimes used, but not commonly, in 

 .he middle ages. 



The names Balista, or Ballista, and Catapulta, imply a Greek origin. 

 The balista was for throwing stones ; the catapulta for propelling darts 

 and arrows. The invention of the latter of these instruments, or rather 

 ts re-invention, is ascribed by Pliny (lib. vii. 56) to the Syrians ; but 

 Dlodorus (lib. xiv.) and Plutarch (' Apophth.,' edit. Wyttenb., 4to, Oxf. 

 . 533) say they were contrived in Sicily, about the same time with the 

 >attering-ram, alluding to a period not earlier than B.C. 300. ./Elian 

 ' Var. Hist," vi. 12) ascribes the invention to Dionysius the Elder him- 

 self, in Sicily. The balista is attributed by Pliny to the Phoenicians. 

 3oth instruments were unquestionably much used in the Roman times. 

 Phey are mentioned in Ccesar, Cicero, Livy, Seneca, Tacitus, and other 

 writers, and were employed in great numbers by Titus at the siege of 

 rerusalem. Two thousand machines for throwing darts and stones 

 were surrendered to the Consul L. M. Censorinus when he marched 

 against Carthage. (Appian, lib. viii., ' De Rebus Punicis,' 80.) 

 Ammianus and Vegetius are both particular in describing the con- 

 struction of the balista. Vegetius, who lived in the 4th century, under 

 Valentinian, speaks of balista;, onagri, scorpiones, arcubalistse, fustibuli, 

 tad fundse, as engines of artillery (lib. iv. c. 22). 



We have no evidence that machines of this description were known 

 n England previous to the arrival of the Normans. According to the 

 estimony of William of Poictou, machines of wood (exclusive of the 

 cross-bow) were used for pouring forth showers of arrows even at the 

 >attle of Hastings ; so early were they introduced in the Norman time, 

 't is worthy of notice, that among the tenants in capite in the Domef- 

 day Survey, balittarii occur, as well as arcu-balittarii. Artillery, how- 

 ever, in the Norman period, wan most frequently used in sea-fights, 



