behind AotW

Private James Martin Runyan of the 59th New York Infantry was wounded in the right thigh at Antietam and his leg was amputated at a field hospital near the battlefield. He was mostly healed by January 1863, but additional dead bone was removed in March. He was finally discharged and sent home in May 1863.

Specimen 1041 in this photograph, from the collection of the Army Medical Museum (now the National Museum of Health and Medicine – finding aid), is the piece removed from Runyan’s tibia in March 1863. It’s from Photographs of Surgical Cases and Specimens (1865), online from the Internet Archive.