GRAPHIC More Wounds on Right Side of Body

lelliott19

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"Predominance of wounds on the Right Side of the Body.
... the operations of skirmishers, who deliver their fire usually from the right hand side of the trees that shelter them; in consequence of this, the right hand, arm, and shoulder, and the right thigh, knee, and leg, receive many more wounds than the left.*" ~ Dr. Edmund Andrews, Surgeon, 1st Illinois Light Artillery
upload_2017-3-20_23-50-49.png

https://publicdomainreview.org/collections/reed-bontecous-portraits-of-wounded-soldiers-1865/
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@huskerblitz brought Dr. Andrews' statement to my attention in another thread. It was something I had never thought about. Even though Dr. Andrews makes his claim in relation to battles in the western theater, it looks like the same held true elsewhere - at least for the example below. Of these 64 soldiers wounded in the arm, 35 were wounded in the right arm and 29 in the left arm.
upload_2017-3-20_23-19-4.png

https://books.google.com/books?id=e...iYKHbQ1A0MQ6AEIHDAB#v=onepage&q=right&f=false

* page 38 - https://archive.org/stream/2164035R.nlm.nih.gov/2164035R#page/n0/mode/2up
 
does anyone have a listing of the soldiers photographed in this type of medical journal? I've been thinking about diving in and paging through as many as I could find, but it helps to ask first.
 
More on the photographer:

Dr. Reed. B. Bontecou, a physician, and soldier from New York took a camera to the American Civil War (1861–1865) and photographed wounded soldiers as well as documenting treatments, surgeries and working conditions of the physician. The civil war surgeon played a major role in identifying and documenting clearly the numerous casualties of the Civil War battlefields. These photos were later used to verify the severity of the soldiers’ wounds in order to determine the level of the post-war pension payments.


The albums of wounded American Civil War soldiers treated and photographed by Dr. Bonticou have appeared in numerous exhibitions, many of the images were displayed at the Metropolitan Museum of Art as part of the Photography and the American Civil War exhibition.


https://www.thevintagenews.com/2016...ed-determine-level-post-war-pension-payments/
 
I'm amazed at how composed the young man looks despite having a horrific injury. He also looks very thin, and I'm saying that as someone with a 30 in. waist. I wonder if he lost weight during his illness.

Glad to read that he made a recovery from the gangrene.
 
I'm amazed at how composed the young man looks despite having a horrific injury. He also looks very thin, and I'm saying that as someone with a 30 in. waist. I wonder if he lost weight during his illness.

Glad to read that he made a recovery from the gangrene.
I'm pretty sure he had decent dose of morphine on board at the time. If not, he has an incredibly high pain threshold.
 
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