File:Cpl. Edson D. Bemis (SP 58), National Museum of Health and Medicine (5505789397).jpg

Cpl. Edson D. Bemis (SP 58), National Museum of Health and Medicine

Description: Corporal Edson D. Bemis, Company K, 12th Massachusetts volunteers, shows three scars from three wounds. He was wounded in the left arm in the battle of Antietam, in the abdomen and hip during the battle of the Wilderness on May 6, 1864, and in the skull at the battle of Hatcher’s Run, Virginia on February 5, 1865. Caption reads: “War Department, Surgeon General’s Office, Army Medical Museum. Surgical Photograph, No. 58. Prepared under the supervision of surgeon D.L. Huntington, U.S.A. by order of the Surgeon General.”

History is on reverse: “Surgeon General’s Office, Army Medical Museum. Photographs Nos. 58.—Case of Corporal Bemis, thrice severely wounded in Three Battles. Private Edson D. Bemis, K, 12th Massachusetts, was wounded at Antietam by a musket ball, which fractured the shaft of his left humerus. The fracture united kindly, with very slight angular displacement and a quarter of an inch shortening. Promoted to be corporal, Bemis received, May 6, 1864, at the battle of the Wilderness, a wound from a musket ball in the right iliac fossa. He was treated in the Chester Hospital, near Philadelphia. There was extensive sloughing about the wound, but it ultimately healed entirely, leaving a large cicatrix, parallel with Poupart’s ligament. Eight months after the injury, Bemis returned to duty with his regiment. On February 5, 1865, Corporal Bemis was again severely wounded at the engagement at Hatcher’s Run, near Petersburg. A musket ball fractured the squamous portion of the left temporal bone, and the patient states that the surgeons found it lodged in the substance of the left cerebral hemisphere, whence it was extracted, together with several fragments of bone, on February 8, 1865. The photograph was taken July 15, 1865. The wound in the head was then nearly healed. There was a slight discharge of healthy pus from one point. The pulsations of the brain could be felt and seen under the integument. The mental and sensory faculties were unimpaired. The Corporal had been discharged from service, and recommended for a pension. See Plate V, First Surgical Volume of the Medical and Surgical History of the Rebellion, p. 162, where additional particulars of this case will be found. Photographed at the Army Medical Museum. By order of the Surgeon General: George A. Otis, Ass’t Surg. U.S.A., Curator A.M.M.”

Date: 15 July 1865

Photo ID: SP 58

Source collection: OHA 82: Surgical Photographs

Repository: National Museum of Health and Medicine, Otis Historical Archives