This chapter provides an introduction to the commodification of prostheses in nineteenth and twentieth-century Britain and United States. By addressing some of the main processes used to commodify prostheses - invention, design and production; use and consumption; and promotion and patenting – it highlights how the medical profession, surgical instruments makers and individuals with physical impairments not only participated in shaping markets for new and modified assistive devices, but by doing so, redefined what it meant to be ‘abled’ and ‘disabled’ in this period. It argues that the redefinition of disability in this period – as a medical affliction that needed to be ‘corrected’ – led to the rise of disability rights activism in the late twentieth and early twenty first centuries. The previously little explored history of prostheses commodification, introduced here, formed no small part in the rise of these movements.

This chapter examines how doctors, nurses and other hospital staff, groups often overlooked in favour of patients, experienced septic finger, wound sepsis and related diseases within the British hospital between 1870 and 1970. The focus on sepsis, as opposed to other types of infection, is significant. Hospital staff were, of course, at risk of contracting all manner of diseases. Yet, widespread concern over sepsis and hospital attempts at prevention and control of sepsis in pre- and post-operative wounds form an often neglected part of the story and span this hundred-year period, as well as recent history with rising antibiotic resistance and hospital mismanagement of infections. While other infections tend to fit more neatly into epidemic periodic cycles, wound sepsis was and still is a continual chronic challenge, one that becomes more important following a serious outbreak or death. Drawing on hospital ledgers and reports, this chapter pays particular attention to occurrences of wound sepsis among staff at four of Britain’s large teaching hospitals, two in England – King’s College (KCH) and St Thomas’ – and two in Scotland – the Royal Infirmaries in Edinburgh (RIE) and Glasgow (GRI).

Focusing on rubber production, as the first stage of the commercial process, Chapter 1 demonstrates the tensions between old and new manufacturing methods among British manufacturers, the medical profession, social conservatives and consumers. Most contraceptive appliances made from the late nineteenth century to the 1960s were made from rubber, but it was the introduction of latex in the early 1930s and contraceptive testing by the National Birth Control Association in 1935 that not only resulted in increased output and factory employment but also drew increasing public attention to the trade’s reputation. Social conservatives protested against the increasing feminisation of the latex contraceptive workforce that made contraceptives visible to adolescent girls for the first time, while the Association sought to ensure that the trade conformed to its medical standards. Yet, what is clear is that such changes were not wholesale during this period. Not all firms adopted latex production and while it was in a firm’s interest to supply the Association, firms largely ignored protests about workforce feminisation. This chapter demonstrates that the introduction of latex in the interwar period did not result in a technological revolution as some historians have suggested, but that old sat uncomfortably alongside new.

Chapter 2 turns to the next battleground in the commodification process in this transitional period: packaging, branding and trademarking. While it was only from the late 1930s at the earliest that the LRC’s famous brand ‘Durex’ became synonymous with the condom, this chapter draws attention to the importance of packaging, branding and trademarks before ‘Durex’. It draws on two prominent examples of branded contraceptives – W. J. Rendell’s ‘Wife’s Friend’ Soluble Quinine Pessary, registered in 1894, and Lambert’s ‘Pro-Race’ rubber cervical cap, registered in 1922 – and outlines the numerous infringement battles over imitation of these brands in the interwar period. Tensions between manufacturers and surgical stores not only indicated the perceived commercial value of brands and trademarks, but were indicative of firms’ attempts to establish themselves as the legitimate authorities on birth control in a more open market for such goods. Branding and trademarks, both a mixture of traditional and modern designs, were a way to convince consumers of the quality and reliability of products, and evidence from the Rendell company archive suggests a degree of success. Rendell’s customers, in particular, viewed these contraceptives as reliable through the identification of the firm’s branding and trademarks.