Shell fragment extracted from the sacrum
9 February 2025
22 year old Private Charles A Trask of the 13th Massachusetts Infantry was mortally wounded in the lower abdomen by this chunk of iron at Antietam on 17 September 1862, and died about two weeks later in a hospital in Chambersburg, PA.
His record in the The Medical and Surgical History of the War of the Rebellion [Volume 2, Part 2, p. 250] identifies this as from a spherical case shot, and notes
The missile (Fig. 211), showing a section of the orifice for the fuze, and weighing two and two-thirds ounces, was contributed to the Museum by Surgeon E. McDonnell, U.S.V.
The original piece of shell taken from Private Trask and many other artifacts of Civil War medicine are now in the Anatomical Collections at the National Museum of Health and Medicine in Silver Spring, MD.
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