phantom limbs

Phantom Limbs by Gaby Wood:

Gaby Wood wrote about prostheses in the Chapter ‘Phantom Limbs’ in ‘The Phantom Museum’

‘…the orthopaedics room with its stack of well worn arms legs and crutches’

Hildi Hawkens and Danielle Olsen wrote about Gaby Wood's chapter in the book: she ‘combines the strictest historical rigour – in its definition as closeness to the known sources – with the highest degree of sympathetic imagination; and her path leads us straight back to one of the oldest forms of storytelling, the fairytale. Storytelling, after all, is not always about making things up; and some of the best stories are true.’ (Hildi Hawkins and Danielle Olsen 2003: xii)

…of prosthetic hands:
‘They seem to be pointing, or beckoning, fingers, folding inwards – gesturing towards towards a story they cannot tell. Where have they been? What have they done?’ (Wood 2003: 79)
“of these stories, these losses and rescues, we know nothing. The hands remain mute, frozen in a language of meaningless signs.’ (Wood 2003: 79)
An object that has a sense of intimacy told by traces of wear and tear. Once used, and now remaining, living on after its owner has died – ghost like…
‘…a delicate things in a light brown leather glove – perhaps a woman’s... shows signs of wear – dark patches along the thumb muscle, heavy creases in the joints of each finger.’ (Wood 2003: 79)
‘it would remain floating in the world, disembodied and senseless, a phantom of some former self.’ (Wood 2003: 80)



References:
Woods, G. 2003. 'Phantom Limbs'. In: Hawkins, H. and Olsen, D. [eds]. The Phantom Museum, and Henry Wellcome’s Collection of Medical Curiosities. Profile Books.