behind AotW

This excellent portrait, from a steel plate engraving, is of Connecticut-born physician Charles Squire Wood, who was Assistant Surgeon of the 66th New York Infantry and treated wounded soldiers on the field after Antietam in September 1862.

This copy is from the Images from the History of Medicine (IHM) collection at the National Library of Medicine. There’s one for sale on eBay, if you hurry.

This evocative piece is from an etching by New York artist William Henry Shelton (1840-1932). He depicted horse artillery troops at Chancellorsville in May 1863, and had a run of 750 copies printed by Bryan, Taylor & Company in New York City in 1887.

He deposited this copy with the Library of Congress in September 1877 to protect his copyright (touch to enlarge).

Shelton was himself an artilleryman – a Private in a New York battery at Antietam and Chancellorsville, later First Sergeant, 2nd Lieutenant, and lastly First Lieutenant near the end of the war – so he had some idea about the subject matter.

Here he is in enlisted uniform.

Two intriguing details about this particular print of Going into Action are the small sketches William made in the margin below the main picture. At the left, a self-portrait of the artist, and on the right, a horse head.

This print is still in the collection of the Library of Congress, and is now online.

His wartime photograph hosted by William “Griff” Griffing on Spared & Shared accompanying a Shelton letter of 19 October 1862.

I’ve gone to Army Surgeon-General Joseph K Barnes’ Medical and Surgical History of the War of the Rebellion (1870-1883) many times over the years chasing Antietam casualties, but never done a systematic scrub through it. I’m underway on that now.

Among the first cases I found was that of Private Samuel Altman of the 50th Georgia Infantry, who was wounded by a gunshot to his head at Fox’s Gap on South Mountain on 14 September 1862. He was captured there and treated by US Army surgeons on the field and in hospitals in Frederick, MD and Philadelphia, PA. Despite their efforts, including trephining – boring a hole in his skull to relive pressure – he succumbed to the effects of his wound on 11 October 1862.

Here’s an illustration of part of his skull, post-mortem, which was kept in the collection of the Army Medical Museum as an aid to education of future combat surgeons.

A little later in that volume I found the fine illustration below, purported by Surgeon Bernard A Vanderkieft to be the skull of an unnamed Confederate sharpshooter knocked from a tree atop South Mountain at long range by Union skirmishers, presumably on 14 September 1862. Touch the image to read the accompanying text.

A fine presentation of all 6 volumes of the MSHWR is online from the National Library of Medicine.

Altman’s skull is found in Volume 2, Part 1 on page 123. The sharpshooter’s is on page 170.