The earliest recorded use of limb prosthesis is that of a Persian soldier named Hegesistratus. In 1579, the French army surgeon Ambroise Pare used artificial limbs on his amputees. Later, a noncorrosive metal-vitallium was discovered. It was widely used for making artificial ligaments. Gore – Tex, a porous form of Teflon was approved for making artificial body parts in the US in 1988.
The first-ever artificial pacemaker was engineered by Dr. A. S. Hyman in 1932. It was an apparatus to deliver regular electrical stimulations to the heart. The first artificial heart to be successfully implanted in a human was the Jarvik-7 in 1982, designed by Willem Johan Kolff and Robert Jarvik. One of the earliest instances of plastic surgery can be found in the Sushruta Samhita, an important medical text from Ancient India.
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