Injured Civil War Soldier (Private Charles Westerfield, Army Medical Museum Specimen No. 4278), April 1865

Born in England, William Bell grew up in the United States and served as a soldier in the Mexican-American War. With the outbreak of the Civil War, he began photographing both battlefields and injured soldiers. He went to work for the Army Medical Museum in Washington, D.C, which later became the National Museum of Health and Medicine. Subjects would be photographed in his studio, located in the museum.

Many of his photographs, including this one, tracked the entry and exit points of a bullet to the body and the visual properties of the wound. This photograph and others were included in the multi-volume book The Medical and Surgical History of the War of the Rebellion (1870–88), an example of which is exhibited nearby. Bell’s work represents an important foundation for the subsequent use of photography in surgery and medical research.