The jointed prosthetic limb originated in the 1500s and steadily improved in the next five centuries. Credit for the invention goes to Ambroise Pare (circa 1510-1590), a French barber-surgeon better known for some of his earlier achievements. For example, during the siege of Turin (1536-37) he realized that gunshot wounds were not poisonous and did not need to be cauterized with boiling oil. In his book of 1545, La Method de traicter les playes faites par les arquebuses et aultres bastons a feu (The Method of Treating Wounds Made by Arquebuses and Other Guns), Pare recommended simple dressings and ointments. The Frenchman also promoted the tying off of blood vessels to prevent hemorrhage during surgery (ligaturation), which had been practiced for more than a thousand years but had fallen into disuse.
Pare then invented a prosthetic limb for above- the-knee amputees, to be fitted to the thigh. It incorporated a kneeling peg leg with a knee Joint that could be released by a thong running to the hip. Pare went on to devise a hand for a French Army captain to use in battle. Called "Le Petit Lorrain," its thumb was fixed but the fingers operated by springs and catches.
A similar hand had previously been devised for Gotz von Berlichingen, a knight who had garnered a romanticized reputation as the "German Robin Hood" for his kidnapping of nobles and attacking merchant convoys for booty. Later he led a section of rebels during the Peasant's War of 1525, but he quit before their ultimate defeat. In 1504 he lost his right arm when "friendly" cannon fire during the siege of Landshut struck his sword and it fell and severed his arm. He lost his hand as a result but gained another moniker: "The Knight of the Iron Hand."
