Old sawbones...the Civil War surgeon.

I declare I wouldn't mind that fellow to the far left with the unruly sideburns tending to me-what a delicious profile, young sir.

From 1840's British daguerreotypes and handsome sideburns, we progress now to the terrors of the American Civil War, where in this image, courtesy of The Burns Archive, we witness a group of gents posed in a Civil War amputation scene in a studio setting.  U.S army surgeon, Dr. S Baird Wolf stands to the right of the image; his assistants hold a bottle and a saw. The soldier, slumped feebly in his chair, casts a dramatic gaze heavenward. A surgeon ('sawbones', or 'old quinine', as they rapidly became known during the war) proficient at amputations could generally perform the operation in around 10 minutes (and, according to an article published on the Ohio State University's website on Civil War battlefield medicine, approx 75% of all amputation surgeries were successful, which to seems rather high considering the undesirable conditions many field surgeons worked in, in addition to inadequate numbers of surgeons, medical supplies and resources, appropriate space and such). 

Daguerreian Dandy declares we shall see another image or two relating to the Civil War in an upcoming post.