Excised Knee Joint. A Round Musket Ball in the Inner Condyle of the Right Femur [Gardiner Lewis, Company B, Nineteenth Indiana Volunteers]

William Bell

1866–67 · Albumen silver print from glass negative · Photographs

Presented like fragments of an ancient sculpture, this set of bones was the right knee of Union Private Gardiner Lewis, who was wounded in the battle of Gettysburg by a round musket ball. It is specimen number 1956 in the collection of the Army Medical Museum. Established in 1862 by order of President Lincoln, the Army Medical Museum—now the National Museum of Health and Medicine—is one of the most important scientific legacies of the Civil War. Its primary mandate was the collection of specimens for research in military medicine and surgery. During and after the war, museum curators solicited contributions from Union doctors—mostly in the form of photographs and patient histories such as those made by Reed Brockway Bontecou. The museum also employed its own photographers to record wounded soldiers, the effect of gunshot wounds and amputations, and its own growing collection of “morbid anatomy . . . together with projectiles and foreign bodies removed.”

Artist

William Bell

Date

1866–67

Medium

Albumen silver print from glass negative

Department

Photographs

Credit line

Purchase, The Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation Gift, through Joyce and Robert Menschel, 1986