Illustration of artificial leg.
The rise in demand for artificial limbs — hands, legs, feet, and arms — after the American Civil War can readily be imagined. Recent scholarship in medical history has explored the medical care of the time.
For those who survived serious battlefield wounds, substitutes had to be provided and entrepreneurs in the field stepped forward; among them, was Marks’ Patent Artificial Limbs which issued a small pamphlet in 1867 advertising its wares, announcing the recent winning of a gold medal prize, and offering many testimonials from surgeons and patients of the excellence of the Marks’ limbs.
The writer of the pamphlet clearly does not want to be labelled as a war profiteer; he says early and often that he is drawing on the experience of fourteen years in the business of artificial limbs. He even takes it upon himself to give some advice to surgeons as to the best way to perform amputations with an eye to fitting with a suitable replacement limb after healing.
You can read the entire pamphlet here or look through more of the Medical Heritage Library’s resources on Civil War medicine.