In the modern age, the loss of a limb presents one of the greatest challenges that an individual may ever have to face. Yet the historical record suggests that not only have people survived limb loss in the past, they have also attempted to replace them with artificial substitutes. We shall look at the lives of three people who suffered limb loss in the twentieth century, discovering how they lost their limbs while examining the attempts – some more successful than others – to replace these limbs artificially.