The Man That Was Used Up

Answers

• Q16TRANSCENDENCE

  Would replacing bodily organs with artificial substitutes preserve the identity of the person?

  No. the replaced man is used up. Satirizes a celebrated general who turns out to be assembled each morning from artificial limbs, eyes, palate and wig, leaving little that is him.

  “Strange you shouldn’t know me, though, isn’t it? Pompey, bring me that leg!” Here Pompey handed the bundle a very capital cork leg, all ready already dressed, which it screwed on in a trice, and then it stood upright before my eyes. Devil the word could I say. “And a bloody action it was ,” continued the thing, as if in a soliloquy; “but then one musn’t fight with the Bugaboos and Kickapoos, and think of coming off with a mere scratch. Pompey, I’ll thank you now for that arm. Thomas (turning to me) is decidedly the best hand at a cork leg; he lives in Race street, No. 79 — stop, I’ll give you his card; but if you should ever want an arm, my dear fellow, you must really let me recommend you to Bishop.” Here Pompey screwed on an arm. … “O yes, by the by, my eye — here, Pompey, you scamp, screw it in! Those Kickapoos are not so very slow at a gouge — but he's a belied man, that Dr. Williams, after all; you can’t imagine how well I see with the eyes of his make.” I now began very clearly to perceive that the object before me was nothing more or less than my new acquaintance, Brevet Brigadier General John A. B. C. Smith. The manipulations of Pompey had made, I must confess, a very striking difference in the appearance of the personal man.

  Burton's Gentleman's Magazine, August 1839 (Wikipedia); Poe Society text listed.