behind AotW

This photograph, from the US Army Surgeon-General’s Photographs of Surgical Cases and Specimens (1870-1888), was taken in 1868, and is of County Cavan-born Michael Dolan, 2nd United States Infantry.

A soldier since 1855, he was First Sergeant of Company D of the 2nd Infantry in action at Antietam and was cited among “those who most distinguished themselves for excellent behavior.” He was wounded by a gunshot to his shoulder at Fredericksburg, VA in December 1862 and had a part of his upper arm bone removed. He recovered and was commissioned a Lieutenant, continuing in the Regular Army to his early retirement in 1870, due to effects of his Fredericksburg wound.

Part of his arm bone with bullet embedded is in the collection of the National Museum of Health and Medicine in Silver Spring, MD. Here’s an illustration of it from the Medical and Surgical History of the War of the Rebellion (1865).

And this is the label from the back of Dolan’s photograph with more about his medical case: