MD -- Silver Spring -- Natl Museum of Health and Medicine (Forest Glen Annex) -- Exhibit: Civil War:
Bruce Guthrie Photos Home Page: [Click here] to go to Bruce Guthrie Photos home page.
Recognize anyone? If you recognize specific folks (or other stuff) and I haven't labeled them, please identify them for the world. Click the little pencil icon underneath the file name (just above the picture). Spammers need not apply.
Slide Show: Want to see the pictures as a slide show?
[Slideshow]
Copyrights: All pictures were taken by amateur photographer Bruce Guthrie (me!) who retains copyright on them. Free for non-commercial use with attribution. See the [Creative Commons] definition of what this means. "Photos (c) Bruce Guthrie" is fine for attribution. (Commercial use folks can of course contact me.) Feel free to use in publications and pages with attribution but you don't have permission to sell the photos themselves. A free copy of any printed publication using any photographs is requested. Descriptive text, if any, is from a mixture of sources, quite frequently from signs at the location or from official web sites; copyrights, if any, are retained by their original owners.
Help? The Medium (Email) links are for screen viewing and emailing. You'll want bigger sizes for printing. [Click here for additional help]
Specific picture descriptions: Photos above with "i" icons next to the bracketed sequence numbers (e.g. "[1] ") are described as follows:
NMHMCW_120521_02.JPG: Dorothea Dix steamer
NMHMCW_120521_16.JPG: 1st and 2nd Cervical Vertebrae of Capt. Wirz.
NMHMCW_120521_21.JPG: Right Radius and Ulna of Capt. Wirz
NMHMCW_120521_26.JPG: Captain Henry Wirz
After the end of the war, Capt. Henry Wirz was arrested and convicted for war crimes committed while commanding the Confederate prison at Camp Sumter, Andersonville, Georgia. Almost 13,000 of the 45,000 Union soldiers held at the camp died in captivity. Although accused of repeated acts of brutality, Wirz claimed that a debilitating injury to his right arm proved his innocence. He was executed on November 10, 1865 and an autopsy revealed that Wirz had had full use of his right arm.
NMHMCW_120907_01.JPG: Tibia, Shrapnel Wound
NMHMCW_120907_19.JPG: Cranium, gunshot wound
NMHMCW_121026_004.JPG: "As soon as the men are sufficiently recovered to need no further surgical treatment we send them off; the Union men to Philadelphia and the Confederates to Baltimore; very few, if any, will be able to serve in the field again."
-- Camp Letterman Hospital, Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, September 12, 1863
"It is wise statesmanship which suggests that in time of peace we must prepare for war, and it is no less a wise benevolence that makes preparation in the hour of peace for assuaging the ills that are sure to accompany war."
-- Clara Barton
NMHMCW_121026_026.JPG: Pocket Pharmaceutical Kit
NMHMCW_121026_054.JPG: Tompkins Wheeled Stretcher:
Bvt. Brig. Gen. Charles H. Tompkins designed this wheeled stretcher in 1866 based upon his experiments in the Civil War.
NMHMCW_121026_065.JPG: Transporting the Wounded:
Few observers predicted the terrible clashes that would leave staggering numbers of wounded soldiers on Civil War battlefields. Transporting the wounded soon became a major challenge. Most regiments initially fielded a small contingent of medical personnel along with a few ambulances. As units amassed into enormous armies, medical directors consolidated ambulance services so they could be dispatched where most needed. Trains and ships transported wounded soldiers from field hospitals to centralized facilities for prolonged care.
NMHMCW_121026_068.JPG: US Army Hospital Steamship, DA January:
The DA January was used on the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers from 1862-1865.
NMHMCW_121026_075.JPG: Hospital Traincar of the Army of the Cumberland
NMHMCW_121026_090.JPG: Lincoln's Last Hours:
"His wound is mortal; it is impossible for him to recover."
-- Dr. Charles A. Leale
On the evening of April 14, 1865, Confederate sympathizer John Wilkes Booth assassinated President Abraham Lincoln with a Deringer pistol at Ford's Theatre. Army physicians and staff from the Army Medical Museum cared for the president through the night, helping him breathe more regularly and making him more comfortable. Lincoln died at 7:20am the following morning.
These iconic artifacts tell the story of Lincoln's final hours, and provide context for the medical, historical, and legal investigation of his death.
NMHMCW_121026_098.JPG: Documenting Medical History:
In addition to anatomical specimens, the Museum gathered a large collection of documents describing medical practices during the Civil War. Letters, reports, photographs, drawings, and the diaries of nurses, surgeons, and soldiers captured the medical histories of thousands of wartime patients. Compiled into the massive, six-volume Medical and Surgical History of the War of the Rebellion, the collection helped revolutionize American medicine by documenting the advances in surgical procedures and treatments made during the devastating conflict.
"You have no idea how difficult it has been to get even such poor histories as those I send today..."
-- Letter to Surgeon J.H. Brinton from Surgeon Henry James about Camp Letterman Hospital, Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, September 12, 1863.
NMHMCW_121026_101.JPG: Excision of Head of Humerous, Gunshot:
Private Benjamin E. Rice (Co. H, 7th Wisconsin), wounded 1862
NMHMCW_121026_109.JPG: Letter from Lonnie Cray to the Office of the Surgeon General, December 29, 1883
NMHMCW_121026_136.JPG: Studying Wounds:
By the end of the Civil War, the Army Medical Museum held more than 4,000 skeletal specimens depicting a wide variety of gunshot, blunt force, and sharp force injuries. Museum staff studied medical records to review surgical procedures and treatments.
Anatomists preserved the wet tissue specimens in alcohol and mounted the dry bones for exhibition. Artists drew illustrations of the carefully catalogued specimens to be used in publications distributed throughout the medical community. These specimens are still used in scientific studies.
NMHMCW_121026_141.JPG: Cranium, gunshot wound
NMHMCW_121026_158.JPG: Civil War Collections:
The years 2011-2015 mark the 150th anniversary of the American Civil War, the bloodiest conflict in US history. Deaths on both sides totaled more than 600,000, while another 600,000 suffered from wounds or illnesses that required medical attention.
From today's perspective, Civil War medicine seems rudimentary. Many doctors had only limited formal medical education and both sides saw thousands die from diseases that spread quickly throughout most military encampments. Yet the Civil War led to remarkable advances in military medical care, as documented by the specimens and artifacts gathered by the Army Medical Museum. Amassed from historical, anatomical, and archival collections, these objects provide an incomparable resource for the study of Civil War medicine.
NMHMCW_121026_166.JPG: "As it is proposed to establish in Washington, an Army Medical Museum, medical officers are directed diligently to collect, and to forward to the office of the Surgeon General, all specimens of morbid anatomy, surgical or medical, which may be regarded as valuable; together with projectiles and foreign bodies removed, and such other matters as may prove of interest in the study of military medicine or surgery. These objects should be accompanied by short explanatory notes. Each specimen in the collection will have appended the name of the medical officer by whom it was prepared."
-- Circular No. 2, Surgeon General William A. Hammond, May 21, 1862
Bigger photos? To save server space, the full-sized versions of these images have either not been loaded to the server or have been removed from the server. (Only some pages are loaded with full-sized images and those usually get removed after three months.)
I still have them though. If you want me to email them to you, please send an email to guthrie.bruce@gmail.com
and I can email them to you, or, depending on the number of images, just repost the page again will the full-sized images.
Directly Related Pages: Other pages with content (MD -- Silver Spring -- Natl Museum of Health and Medicine (Forest Glen Annex) -- Exhibit: Civil War) directly related to this one:
[Display ALL photos on one page]:
2019_MD_NMHM_CW: MD -- Silver Spring -- Natl Museum of Health and Medicine (Forest Glen Annex) -- Exhibit: Civil War (15 photos from 2019)
2016_MD_NMHM_CW: MD -- Silver Spring -- Natl Museum of Health and Medicine (Forest Glen Annex) -- Exhibit: Civil War (13 photos from 2016)
2015_MD_NMHM_CW: MD -- Silver Spring -- Natl Museum of Health and Medicine (Forest Glen Annex) -- Exhibit: Civil War (117 photos from 2015)
2014_MD_NMHM_CW: MD -- Silver Spring -- Natl Museum of Health and Medicine (Forest Glen Annex) -- Exhibit: Civil War (28 photos from 2014)
2013_MD_NMHM_CW: MD -- Silver Spring -- Natl Museum of Health and Medicine (Forest Glen Annex) -- Exhibit: Civil War (6 photos from 2013)
2011_MD_NMHM_CW: MD -- Silver Spring -- Natl Museum of Health and Medicine (Forest Glen Annex) -- Exhibit: Civil War (12 photos from 2011)
2012 photos: Equipment this year: My mainstays were the Fuji S100fs, Nikon D7000, and the new Fuji X-S1. I also used an underwater Fuji XP50 and a Nikon D600. The first three cameras all broke this year and had to be repaired.
Trips this year:
three Civil War Trust conferences (Shepherdstown, WV, Richmond, VA, and Williamsburg, VA),
a week-long family reunion cruise of the Caribbean,
another week-long family reunion in the Wisconsin Dells (with lots of in-transit time in Ohio and Indiana), and
my 7th consecutive San Diego Comic-Con trip (including side trips to Zion, Bryce, the Grand Canyon, etc).
Ego strokes: I had a picture of Miss DC, Ashley Boalch, published in the Washington Post. I had a photograph of the George Segal San Francisco Holocaust memorial used as the cover of Quebec Francais (issue 165). Not being able to read French, I'm not entirely sure what the article is about but, hey! And I guess what could be considered to be a positive thing, my site is now established enough that spammers have noticed it and I had to block 17,000 file description postings for Viagra and whatever else..
Number of photos taken this year: just below 410,000.
Connection Not Secure messages? Those warnings you get from your browser about this site not having secure connections worry some people. This means this site does not have SSL installed (the link is http:, not https:). That's bad if you're entering credit card numbers, passwords, or other personal information. But this site doesn't collect any personal information so SSL is not necessary. Life's good!
Limiting Text: You can turn off all of this text by clicking this link:
[Thumbnails Only]