Very few students of the Civil War know the name James Edward Hanger; born in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley in 1843, he would relive the horrors of human conflict near the end of his days with America’s entry into the First World War.
You see, James Hanger had already seen war up close and personal … very personal, losing his leg to a six pound cannon ball in the first land battle of the civil war at Phillipi, Virginia (now West Virginia) on June 3, 1861. That unfortunate encounter made him the war’s first amputee.
As such, making his home in Washington after the war might have gotten him some notice. But Hanger fought for the Confederacy, and well … that was a shoe that didn’t fit. Yet it wasn’t Hanger’s actions on the battlefield that commanded attention. It was what he did after the firing stopped … that made all the difference.
On an operating table improvised from a stable door, Union surgeon Dr. James D. Robinson of the 16th Ohio Volunteers determined that the captured rebel’s leg could not be saved. Even worse, shock from severe blood loss likewise precluded any anesthesia. Sorry son, but that leg’s gotta come off.
Hanger survived the operation, recovered in a nearby residence, and in August was released in an exchange of POWs, hobbling his way home to Churchville, Virginia, on crutches and a crude peg-leg. Asking his mother for privacy, he secluded himself in an upstairs bedroom, requesting only food, a knife, barrel staves, and a few limbs from the willow tree in the yard. He seemed to be literally whittling his time away. Or so his family thought.
Yet when he emerged three months later, he walked out, aided by a carved appendage that could only be termed the world’s first flexible, artificial limb. He would later patent his invention and form J. E. Hanger, Inc. in Staunton and Richmond to manufacture prosthetics for the many other war wounded. Hanger soon expanded his business to Washington, D.C., improving his prosthetic designs and securing several more patents, including a specialized lathe for prosthetic manufacture, a water turbine, an adjustable, reclining chair, and an improvement in the Venetian blind.
By the time of the First World War, J. E. Hanger, Inc. was the world’s premier manufacturer of prosthetic devices. When the inventor died on June 9, 1919 at age 76, his company had branch offices in Atlanta, Philadelphia, St. Louis, Pittsburgh, London, and Paris. In 1989, Hanger Orthopedic Group, Inc. purchased J. E. Hanger, Inc. of Washington, D.C., renaming the subsidiary Hanger Prosthetics and Orthotics.The company's 2007 annual report cites net sales at $571.7 million and sees about 650,000 patients annually including veterans who have served in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Not bad for an 18-year-old Virginia boy who went off to war a century and a half ago and came home a cripple.
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