Anyone on Facebook, and of course interested in maritime or naval history, would certainly do well to look up Portsmouth Historic Dockyard’s Fan Page, and take a look at their recent collection of great photographs provided by the Royal Naval Museum.  I happened upon them today, and feel they are a great opportunity to sample the some of the atmosphere in which these men lived.  It is rare to be able to see such a nice collection of historic photos all in one place, and as easily accessible as they are on Facebook.  This site has certainly come a long way from its beginnings as a social internet venue for college students.  Here are a couple examples of the photos provided by the Royal Naval Museum.

The link to the photo album is here (may need a Facebook account, so I pasted them to my own account if you wanted to see them! Go to the Facebook button at top right).  I am always on the lookout for sites which provide the opportunity to peruse high quality photos, and this is a great example.  What about you?  Have any great sites that you’ve found an want to share.  Let me know!

Above is a watercolor image originally painted by a Scottish surgeon and gifted artist named Charles Bell.  During the Battle of Waterloo, Bell witnessed many horrific and gruesome injuries, many of which he was careful to record and then transform into medical artwork.

From the Wellcome Library’s blog:

Leaving for Belgium on 26 June 1815, Bell took with him his surgical instruments and a sketchbook, in which he could document the injuries he witnessed and tended to. In 1836, he turned his sketches into a series of stunning watercolours, which are on deposit at the Wellcome Library from the [Royal] Army Medical Services Museum. Four of these watercolours are to go on loan to the Art and Exhibition Hall of the Federal Republic of Germany in Bonn for a major exhibition, ‘Napoleon und Europa: Traum und Trauma’ (‘Napoleon and Europe: Dream and Trauma’), which will run from 17 December 2010 to 25 April 2011.

The watercolours provide us with a graphic representation of the dreadful injuries suffered by soldiers fighting at Waterloo. The images of missing arms, protruding intestines and gaping wounds to the chest and neck - together with the pained expressions on the soldiers’ faces - all convey the horror of the scenes witnessed by Bell and other surgeons in the battlefield hospitals.

Bell wrote descriptions to accompany his paintings. For one, of a soldier suffering from a head wound, he noted:

“…On the fifth day after the battle was insensible. A portion of the frontal bone, an inch in diameter, was found driven into the brain, and it stood perpendicularly; not possible to extract it, from its being firmly wedged. Trepanning performed. Quite insensible during the operation and showed no sensibility until on the next day, being bled, he shrank….On the removal of the bone a quantity of blood and brain came out, and coagulum was scooped out from betwixt the skull and dura mater. Three days after the operation he became more sensible, and has been improving.”

All of these medical and surgical procedures were of course performed without any semblance of septic technique, wound preparation, or antibiotics as none yet existed.  No surgical gloves were worn, no masks, no nothing.  After going through my surgical rotation, I can say that the idea of these types of crude operations being done in the open with men in plain clothes leaves one with a very different image of surgery.  The wounds themselves are unfortunately not completely dissimilar from much of what is seen today in wars or even just in trauma cases.  The evolution of sterile technique from the time of Waterloo until today often makes me wonder which of today’s medical and surgical practices we will look back on as being archaic and barbaric.