Label Text:
William H. Bell fought in the Union Army at Antietam and Gettysburg before becoming chief photographer at the Army Medical Museum (now the National Museum of Health and Medicine) in Washington, D.C. He took this photograph of the upper arm bone of twenty-two-year-old Private Barney White, who had been shot in the right elbow at Williamsburg, Virginia. The injury, coupled with Bright’s disease (a historical classification of kidney diseases), proved to be fatal.
When the war began, no one was prepared for the volume or severity of the resulting injuries, owing to the increased range and accuracy of the new “Minié ball” ammunition. The Army Medical Museum strove to improve wartime medical care by documenting cases of disease and injury with photographs of specimens of injured bone and of soldiers before and after operations.
MD, 2011
Link to share this object record:
https://museums.fivecolleges.edu/detail.php?t=objects&type=ext&id_number=AC+1992.33 |
