Leg Amputation
In February 1858, Brookings rode a horse from Sioux Falls to the Yankton area during a blizzard. His horse slipped and fell into Split Rock Creek in the freezing weather. Brookings made it safely to Yankton, but his wet legs had suffered such severe frostbite they both needed to be amputated. He spent the rest of his life using a pair of squeaky, wooden legs that caused him discomfort and sometimes made walking difficult.
Read more about this topic: Wilmot Brookings
Famous quotes containing the words leg and/or amputation:
“Here’s a wing [laughs]. What do you like, the leg or the wing, Henry, or do you still go for the old hearts and lungs?”
—Nicholas Pileggi, U.S. screenwriter, and Martin Scorsese. Tommy DeVito (Joe Pesci)
“The state of society is one in which the members have suffered amputation from the trunk, and strut about so many walking monsters,—a good finger, a neck, a stomach, an elbow, but never a man.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)