Community Event - Kingston - KFPL Live Presents "Spare Parts"

The latest installment of KFPL Live (Kingston Frontenac Public Library's monthly speakers' series) is entitled Spare Parts. This interactive presentation by Maxime Chouinard, Curator of the Museum of Health Care, explores the history of medical enhancements through the Museum's collection of dentures, prosthetics and pacemakers. 

Paralympic athletes have made us familiar with modern prostheses, and many of us have or know someone with a high-tech pacemaker or extremely lifelike dentures.  We probably all have a sense that these are just the latest versions of objects with a long history, perhaps remembering the story of George Washington's wooden teeth.  In any century people may have been born without a limb, or risked losing one in battle or in an accident; even if nothing else happened, most could expect to lose teeth as they aged.  Human ingenuity led to the development of replacement body parts, at least as far back as the ancient Egyptians.  Modern advances, like synthetic materials and myoelectricity, where electrical signals from a patient's muscles are used to move an artificial limb, are built on a long tradition.