![]() Locked away in the stacks of the Cushing/Whitney Medical Library, these Civil War photographs are one of four collections of enlarged photographs commissioned by the head surgeon at Harewood, Reed Bontecou, M.D., a pioneer in the art of clinical photography. Knoblauch’s photo analysis will comprise one chapter in her dissertation on the use of photography in American medical practice from 1839 to the eve of World War II. “To piece together what happens after this moment, how people live with their wounds afterwards, how that patient experience either carries with them or doesn’t carry with them, has been a motivating factor for me.” “This is one moment in this person’s life,” said Heidi Knoblauch, a doctoral candidate in the History of Medicine program, who is examining Yale’s collection of 98 photographs taken during the Civil War at Harewood Army Hospital in Washington, D.C. These are the “after” photos, taken after the men had left their homes to fight for the Union or the Confederacy, and after they were wounded, carrying the scars of the American Civil War for the rest of their lives. On closer inspection of the oval gold-lined frames, the serene faces are scarred, bald spots divided by deep canyon-like cuts, shoulders swollen around bullet craters. In March 1862, he was commissioned out of medical school as an acting assistant surgeon in the Union Army and was in charge of Eckington General Hospital near Washington, D.C.Seated in profile, the young men pose as they would for family portraits. He also served during the Second Battle of Bull Run in August 1862, and, at the deadliest one-day battle in American military history, the Battle of Antietam, Sharpsburg, Maryland, in September 1862. He saw surgical duty while still in medical school at the first major battle of the Civil War, the First Battle of Bull Run in Manassas, Virginia, in July 1861. As such, he became known as "America's first brain surgeon." ![]() Keen also gained celebrity as the first surgeon in the Americas to perform a successful brain tumor removal in 1887. In 1892, Keen co-authored the first American surgery text based on Listerian principles, Cutter said. Joseph Lister, an influential British surgeon, came to Philadelphia during his 1876 tour of America, Keen heard his views on antisepsis in surgery and was one of the first American surgeons to adopt Lister's system. Keen collaborated with both men to write a classic text, "Gunshot Wounds and Other Injuries of Nerves," published in 1864, said Laura Cutter, an archivist at the museum. Weir Mitchell, who was an early believer in what is commonly known as phantom limb pain. His service centered on Turner's Lane Hospital in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, which was devoted to treating injuries and diseases of the nerves. Those studies are considered to be the origin of American neurology. He attributed his expertise to the successes of rigorous research, for which he passionately advocated, according to a profile by the National Museum of Health and Medicine, a branch of the Research Support Division of the Defense Health Agency Research and Engineering Directorate.ĭuring the Civil War, Keen developed an interest in documenting injuries of the nervous system. Keen's work played an important role in the significant improvements in battlefield survival rates during conflicts in the 20th century. "Research has not yet ceased to give us better and better methods of coping with disease and death, and – thank God – it will never cease so long as disease and death continue to afflict the human race," he wrote. "Clinical observation has done much, but research and chiefly experimental research, has done far more." "Between these two dates is a veritable chasm of ignorance which we can only really appreciate when we peer over its edge and discover how broad and deep it is," he wrote. In his influential paper, Keen lamented the countless deaths during the Civil War that could have been avoided with better military field surgical techniques and surgeons with advanced knowledge. ![]() In it, he marveled at the knowledge gained in the field of military medicine during his 50 years of service and expressed his excitement for what was to come in the next 50 years and beyond, according to staff at the National Museum of Health and Medicine in Silver Spring, Maryland. With a unique perspective after serving in two cataclysmic wars, Keen wrote a 1918 paper called "Military Surgery in 1861 and in 1918." He played a key role in the birth of bacteriology, neurology, use of antisepsis, sterile surgical techniques, brain surgery, and the breakthrough discovery that insects carry and spread diseases. Once known as "America's first brain surgeon," Keen helped propel numerous advances in medicine. was a pioneering military doctor whose career spanned surgical duty on the bloody battlefields of the American Civil War through influential research work during World War I. ![]()
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