activities of life, with their resulting benefit, are no longer denied them.
Surgery, the scientific making of mechanical devices for the correction of deformities, and the manufacture of artificial substitutes for lost limbs, have led in the advance of methods intended to better the condition or ameliorate the suffering of humanity.
Time was when the loss of a leg meant the stumping through the balance of life on a crotched stick. There was Peter Stuyvesant, for instance, whose portrait is shown on the cover of this catalogue. He lost a leg in the wars in the West Indies in 1640. Thereafter, during the time he was the last Dutch Director General of New Netherlands—from 1647 until his surrender to the English in 1664—and to his death in New York in 1682 at the ripe old age of eighty, he pegged his way along. He was a man well able to afford the best in life, but nothing better than the ordinary peg leg was then obtainable, and so for forty years or more Peter Stuyvesant suffered the inconvenience due to the crude device.
Now, fortunately for the afflicted, better things are possible. Science and art have combined so successfully in the manufacture of our artificial limbs that not only is the wearer free from discomfort but he is enabled to continue his career of activity, and pursue, as may be necessary, his labors for a livelihood. Besides, the perfection of design and manufacture of these aids makes their presence difficult of detection.
Not only is ordinary labor well performed, but many remarkable feats are accomplished by wearers of limbs of our manufacture. A few instances are cited below.
A noted pitcher of a baseball team and a remarkable bicycle rider, although deprived in early life of both legs by accident, is able to hold a position of prominence in his profession.
An operator constantly on his feet in a signal tower suffers no inconvenience. After making five experiments he has found finally that the artificial leg with which we have equipped him is the most comfortable he has ever worn.
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