File:Pvt. Henry Reens (SP 177), National Museum of Health and Medicine (5182024543).jpg

Pvt. Henry Reens (SP 177), National Museum of Health and Medicine

Description: Private Henry Reens, Company I, 30th Massachusetts, showing the wound of his right side. He was wounded by a musket ball on October 19, 1864 at the battle of Cedar Creek, and was treated at the hospital at Frederick, Maryland and then transferred to various hospitals in Philadelphia because he continued to suffer from convulsions. Caption reads: “War Department, Surgeon General’s Office, Army Medical Museum. Surgical Photograph, No. 177. Prepared under the supervision of Assistant Surgeon George A. Otis, U.S.A. by order of the Surgeon General.”

History is on verso: "Surgeon General’s Office, Army Medical Museum. Photograph No. 177.—Recovery after Fracture of the Right Ilium by a Musket Ball. At the battle of Cedar Creek, October 19, 1864, Private Henry Reens, I, 30th Massachusetts, aged twenty-one, was struck on the right side of the abdomen by a musket ball, which passed through the crest of the ilium, and emerged posteriorly, six inches from the wound of entrance. He was sent to the general hospital at Frederick. Numerous bits of bone were removed from both orifices of the wound. On November 18th, the patient was transferred to Filbert Street Hospital in Philadelphia. There was protracted suppuration, and the patient was unable to bear his weight on the limb of the injured side for five months. On April 26, 1865, he was moved to Turner’s Lane, Philadelphia, where the diagnosis of ‘Epilepsy’ was recorded. On May 10th, he was again transferred to McClellan Hospital, and here the diagnosis, “gunshot wound of the ilium” reappears. He was discharged from service June 4, 1865. On April 3, 1867, he visited the Army Medical Museum. The anterior cicatrix was adherent to the bone. There was partial false anchyloses of the hip, and the knee was also somewhat stiff. Reens was pensioned in 1865, and Examiner T.F. Smith, stated, September 5, 1873, that the patient’s ‘epileptiform convulsions were due to disease of the nerve centres, result of an ascending neuritis, having its origin in a nerve in the wound.’ A more detailed account of this case will be found on page 225 of the Second Surgical Volume of the Medical and Surgical History of the Rebellion. Photographed at the Army Medical Museum. By order of the Surgeon General: George A. Otis, Assistant Surgeon, U.S.A., Curator, A.M.M.”

Date: 1867

Photo ID: SP 177

Source Collection: OHA 82: Surgical Photographs

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