The First Civil War Photographs of Soldiers with Facial Wounds.

Source: New York University Medical Center, New York, USA.

Abstract

During the Civil War, for the first time in medical history, a large number of excellent photographs were taken of many wounded Union and (to a lesser degree) Confederate soldiers by photographers assigned by their doctors or surgeons, or by photographers employed by the Army Medical Museum. The majority of these photographs demonstrating facial, head, and neck wounds have not been published since the Civil War, except for a few minor exceptions. The actual art of printing photographs in medical journals, daily newspapers, and magazines did not even begin until the early 1880s--almost two decades after the Civil War [24]. Any photographs that could be found in certain rare medical and surgical books during and immediately after the War were actually pasted into those books by their printers.

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Reed B. Bontecou, M.D. and Civil War Surgical Photography

Excerpted from: civilwarmed.blogspot.com

Reed Bontecou was born April 22, 1824, in Troy, New York. During his schooling, he demonstrated an exceptional aptitude for the natural sciences. His work was so expertly done that he was often entrusted with the teaching of botany and zoology, even though a student himself.

In 1842, Bontecou began the study of medicine under the tutelage of several prominent Troy physicians and surgeons, and from 1844 to 1845, he attended lectures at the Medical Department of the University of the City of New York. He finished his studies in Vermont at Castleton Medical College, receiving his M.D. in 1847.

When the Civil War broke out, Bontecou was commissioned a surgeon with one of the Union infantry regiments supplied by the Troy area, and performed his first field operations after the Battle of Big Bethel in June 1861. He was present at the famous battle between the Monitor and the Virginia, the capture of Yorktown, and was placed in charge of hospitals at Fortress Monroe, Virginia, and Beaufort, South Carolina.

In late 1863, Bontecou was ordered to Washington, DC, to take charge of the Harewood General Hospital, and was on duty there until it was disbanded in 1866. It was during his tenure at Harewood that he made his most important contribution: he is credited with being the largest contributor to the Army Medical Museum. The thousands of specimens and hundreds of photographs that Bontecou contributed became a major foundation of the museum, which subsequently developed into the National Museum of Health and Medicine (NMHM), in Washington, DC.

Bontecou’s photographs, however, had a more immediate impact than the museum’s mission. Dr. Rogers credits him with being the first to apply photography for clinical purposes, showing the condition of the wounded when the soldiers were first admitted to the hospital, and many times when they were discharged. Indeed, the photographs were invaluable in qualifying disabled veterans for pension payments.

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Reed B. Bontecou, M.D.--His Role in Civil War Surgery and Medical Photography

From: ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

(ABSTRACT) This article on the subject of Civil War injuries and their surgical repair is devoted to Reed B. Bontecou, M.D., a New York surgeon who contributed greatly to the use of photography to document the casualties of the battlefield as seen in the Northern as well as the Southern states. Photographs of the wounded soldiers helped to verify the severity of their injuries, and helped to determine the degree and amount of the post-war pension payments. These photographs were one of the largest sources which were used in the creation of the Otis Archives of the present-day National Museum of Health and Medicine in Washington, D.C. Some of the wounded soldiers' photographs in the Otis Archives demonstrate the use of plastic surgery techniques to repair the wounded face, head and neck, torso, and the extremities by only a handful of Northern and Confederate surgeons including Gurdon Buck, J.S. Gouley and Henry B. Sands of New York City; H. Culbertson, U.S.V. of Madison, Wisconsin; J. Cooper McKee of Washington, D.C., W.W. Keen, Jr. of Philadelphia; and C.B. Gibson, P.A.C.S. of Richmond; S.H. Stout of Tennessee; and J.B. Bean, a dentist of Chattanooga.

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