William Bell was a veteran of the American Civil War who fought at Antietam and Gettysburg, and became chief photographer of the Army Medical Museum in Washington. He took photographs of injured soldiers as part of a project to document the range of injuries among veterans. On the left, the solider is cleverly posed in front of a mirror to display both the entry and exit of the bullet that had perforated his ileal bone. On the right is the excised knee joint of Private Gardiner Louis with a musket ball contained in it.

Bell’s work was an important start for the field of military medicine, as it allowed physicians to see the types of wounds soldiers received as well as assessing ways to care for those wounds. His extensive field experience later led him to work as photographer for the Pennsylvania railroad and on an expedition to Patagonia.