THE USES OF WOOD 



809 



the war the various governments may furnish their 

 soldiers with limbs as a part of the pension system. Fol- 

 lowing our Civil War, our government supplied 100,000 

 artificial limbs to disabled soldiers and sailors, and the 

 practice of supplying them was kept up during several 

 years. The Congress passed legislation in the fall of 

 1917 known as the War Risk Insurance Act. One of 

 its many commendable features was a provision accom- 

 panied by an appropriation for the supplying of arti- 

 ficial limbs to amputated soldiers of this war. It is the 



policy of the War 

 Risk Insurance 

 Bureau, I am in- 

 formed, to supply 

 the p e r m a nent 



HE CAN FIRE AX ENGINE 



A man with an 

 artificial leg is 

 not necessarily 

 debarred from 

 occupations 

 which might be 

 considered 

 impossible. 

 The 



accompanying 

 pictures give 

 scenes front 

 real life, 

 I hough rather 

 rarely 



encountered. 

 The power of 

 the will has 

 us much to do 

 with it as the 

 power of the 

 wooden leg. 



artificial limb as soon as the ampu- 

 tated man is prepared for its use. 



Between 125 and 150 firms 

 making limbs carry on business in 

 this country. Some are large establishments employing 

 factory methods and operating on a fairly extensive 

 scale, while others are small, giving employment to only 

 a few persons, and doing a large part of the work by 

 hand. It is a business that can be carried on in a small 

 way without calling for much capital, though it is capable 

 of enlargement without limit. 



The average life of an artificial limb is about eight 

 years, and repairs are frequently necessary during that 

 time, for accidents befall artificial members as frequently 

 as those which nature provided the wearer, but with this 

 difference, the limb which nature gives does not wear 

 out, while the man-made substitute is a machine which is 

 not guaranteed to bear its burden and do its work for 

 four score years and ten. There are differences in these 

 machines as there are in machinery of other kinds. Some 

 are better than others. Each manufacturer persuades 

 himself that his product is best, and he tries to persuade 



others that such is the case. More than one hundred 

 and fifty patents have been issued on artificial limbs in 

 this country, and nearly every patent is backed by an 

 owner or agent whose business it is to push the article 

 by all fair methods. That helps to account for the num- 

 erous claims of superiority by different manufacturers. 

 Some of these claims are doubtless urged more strongly 

 than is warranted by real merit; yet the fact cannot 

 be disputed that many ingenious and valuable devices are 

 in use and that frequent improvements are being made. 

 It remains a fact, none the less, that most manufac- 

 tured limbs have their weak places and that not one has 

 yet been invented that equals nature's own device. The 

 joint is the hard part to imitate. The natural joint is a 

 wonderful piece of mechanism and it defies all imitations. 

 The manufactured product may have joints modeled after 

 nature with the most painstaking care ; yet the most en- 

 thusiastic manufacturer does not claim that he can make 

 an ankle joint as good as the real article. The nearer 

 it copies nature, the more complex it becomes and con- 

 sequently the more liable it is to get out of order. Even 

 the natural ankle is sometimes sprained and put out of 

 commission for days or weeks at a time, and the arti- 

 ficial is still more liable to meet mishaps. A doctor may 

 charge twenty-five dollars for repairing a displaced ankle 



WOODEN LEGS MAY BE USED IN CLIMBING 



bone; and it is no reflection on the manufactured article 

 if it calls for repairs that cost money. Some such joints 

 may cost twenty-five dollars in a year in repairs, or twice 

 as much as the natural foot costs in shoes. A repair 

 bill of that size, however, is declared to be excessive by 

 the makers of some of the best artificial ankle joints. 

 The case is said to be similar to that of an automobile 

 which may go a long time without any cost for repairs, 

 and then run into a streak of bad luck. 



A high grade wooden limb consists of more parts than 

 a casual observer would suppose, and most of the patents 

 cover details rather than the general form of the limb. 

 All efforts are directed toward imitating nature as nearly 

 as possible in form and movement. So close is the 

 imitation in some cases that the wearers of artificial 



