*nods* I wasn't trying to dismiss the technology aspect at all - that was my main area of curiousity/reading and it was obviously huge. I was just thinking about characterisation, since you kind of brought that up. I think that when an individual becomes disabled, their degree of bitterness/anger in that difficult beginning is often linked to how much help and fair treatment they perceive themselves to have gotten or not gotten.
So while there is a lot of universality in the experience of that strong, healthy young man who is suddenly an amputee, and as you mention wouldn't necessarily even have survived to live through these issues in earlier wars - I was just wondering about any non-transferable aspects in the problems of aftercare. And there might not have been any differences at all, I would just be curious to know either way. The show does touch on Sousa's frustration with society, as opposed to him strictly being frustrated with the missing leg.
Those are good points about the pace of improvements throughout history and combat. I think that I wouldn't argue with
(The history of adaptive tech is market-and-civilian-technology driven, not purely government driven. Governments make war and thus make wounded, but civilian demand for adaptive tech rose greatly in the post-war period, too -- more cars, more factories, more tractors, more power tools, better birth survival rates, etc. The VA was not the sole market, nor necessarily even the primary.
in general, but in the specific issue I was looking up - usability of knees in above-the-knee prosthetic legs - WWII was an overwhelming factor. After the protests the VA launched a push to organise the research and direct it in certain ways based on what the vets were saying were their biggest problems. Up until then that specific prosthesis hadn't reliably advanced much at all. The breakthroughs around knee bending/locking/unlocking that happened in the late 40s were veteran driven even if certainly other amputees and research motivation did exist.
When the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) initiated a research program in limb prosthetics in 1945 at the request of the Surgeon General of the Army, surveys of amputees indicated that the above-knee amputees felt that their greatest need was a knee lock that would prevent stumbling. This "finding" prompted a number of designs in the United States that used hydraulic systems to provide knee locking or braking on demand
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: 2015-02-28 07:52 pm (UTC)So while there is a lot of universality in the experience of that strong, healthy young man who is suddenly an amputee, and as you mention wouldn't necessarily even have survived to live through these issues in earlier wars - I was just wondering about any non-transferable aspects in the problems of aftercare. And there might not have been any differences at all, I would just be curious to know either way. The show does touch on Sousa's frustration with society, as opposed to him strictly being frustrated with the missing leg.
Those are good points about the pace of improvements throughout history and combat. I think that I wouldn't argue with
(The history of adaptive tech is market-and-civilian-technology driven, not purely government driven. Governments make war and thus make wounded, but civilian demand for adaptive tech rose greatly in the post-war period, too -- more cars, more factories, more tractors, more power tools, better birth survival rates, etc. The VA was not the sole market, nor necessarily even the primary.
in general, but in the specific issue I was looking up - usability of knees in above-the-knee prosthetic legs - WWII was an overwhelming factor. After the protests the VA launched a push to organise the research and direct it in certain ways based on what the vets were saying were their biggest problems. Up until then that specific prosthesis hadn't reliably advanced much at all. The breakthroughs around knee bending/locking/unlocking that happened in the late 40s were veteran driven even if certainly other amputees and research motivation did exist.
[from source in post]