See what analysis of one man's amputated leg, donated to The Bone Museum, tells us about his otherwise invisible pain.

Readers thought the fictional Civil War vet George Dedlow, a character suffering from phantom limb pain in an 1866 story in The Atlantic, was real—and sent donations and stopped by the hospital to meet him.

Listen to an amputee describe what it was like in the aftermath of his partial foot amputation and how his chronic, extreme pain fueled his depression and his decision to attempt to alleviate the pain with the radical surgery.

Amputees must navigate the challenging medical and economic aspects of limb support and replacement, but advances in technology and research may reduce these costs.

Read the 1866 story that put phantom limbs on the map.

Listen to how bionic limbs are reshaping what it means to live as an amputee in this award-winning 2022 podcast series covering the stories of two amputees who struggled with shortcomings in prosthetic technology.

Prehistoric hunter-gatherers performed amputations and appear to have provided post-op care, according to analysis of a recent fossil discovery from almost 31,000 years ago.

Learn how a doctor successfully treated a patient's phantom limb pain with a mirror, tricking his brain into thinking his still-present arm was the missing paralyzed left one.

Hear Aristotle Domingo, a bilateral amputee athlete, discuss his amputation journey.

Non-amputees can be tricked into thinking they have phantom limbs with rubber arm experiments.

Phantom limb pain may often match the pain or contortion of the injury that led to the limb loss.

The concept of phantom limbs, the perception that amputated limbs are still present, dates back to a French military surgeon in the 16th century.

The concept of phantom limbs, the perception that amputated limbs are still present, dates back to a French military surgeon in the 16th century.

Hear about life as an amputee and how mirror box therapy helped.

Palliative care physician BJ Miller describes his phantom limb pain and itching after losing both legs and half an arm in an accident. Mirror box therapy eventually helped him, alongside physical therapy. This podcast also features neuroscientist V.S. Ramachandran who explains how he developed mirror box therapy in the 1990s.

Recent research found that the brain doesn't seem to massively rewire following amputation—upending earlier beliefs about the cause of phantom limb pain.

Black patients are losing their limbs at a rate triple that of other groups due in large part to inequities in diabetes care and management.

Every 3.5 minutes in the US, a limb is amputated due to diabetes.

Breaking down the knee's anatomy

The human knee is a remarkably complex structure carrying the full weight of the body throughout a person’s life while allowing a number of complex twists, flexes, and extensions. It's also one of the body's biggest weaknesses—the location of chronic pain and replacement surgeries for millions of Americans.

Phantom limbs aren't just limited to limbs—there are phantom breasts, teeth, and more, and these sensations are often painful.

Research suggests the brain maintains connections to lost limbs

Decades-old research suggested brain reorganization after amputations, but brain scans show unchanged limb representations. Phantom limb pain may result from such unchanged brain maps, which may enhance prosthetic limb control in brain-computer interface technology.

This Texas city is having an 'amputation crisis'

Texas has some of the highest rates of diabetes-related amputations in the country. Towering over the rest of the Longhorn state is the city of San Antonio, where men are nearly three times as likely to lose a limb to diabetes than women. This article explains how men in this majority Mexican American city are genetically and culturally at risk of Type 2 diabetes, a disease involving issues with the blood sugar-regulating hormone insulin.

An experimental bionic knee has been directly integrated into the user's muscle and bone—not an external socket—marking a significant prosthetic advancement.

The man who turned his leg into a hotspot

Biohacker Michael Laufer recently had a 512GB drive implanted in his leg, which can store data, stream music or movies, and power a hot spot and mesh network. It's called the PegLeg, and WIRED's Daniel Oberhaus spoke with Laufer about the device and the field of biohacking.

Limb regeneration research may lead to treatments for arthritis

For scientists pursuing the cure for arthritis, the holy grail of discoveries lies in how to regrow healthy cartilage inside human joints. While this feat has so far resisted our best scientific attempts, there are plenty of other human tissues—such as the liver and fingertips—that will successfully regenerate.

Real surgical footage reveals what arthritis looks like up close

Arthritis is a painful condition of human joints that often results from the loss or breakdown of the soft cartilage padding that naturally exists between bones. This video shows footage from an actual knee surgery that beautifully demonstrates the difference between normal cartilage and the degenerative cartilage seen in osteoarthritis.