X-ray

Warren Anatomical Museum collection, Center for the History of Medicine in the Francis A. Countway Library, Harvard University

Surgery at the Harvard University Service American Ambulance, Neuilly-Sur-Seine, France, 1915. Also from the Greenough Lantern Slides Collection. Warren Anatomical Museum collection, Center for the History of Medicine in the Francis A. Countway Library, Harvard University

Lantern slide of an X-ray showing a dark object, possibly shrapnel, behind the ribs, circa 1915

From a set of lantern slides shot by Dr. Robert Battey Greenough (1871–1937), covering his time in 1915 with the First Harvard Unit of the American Ambulance Hospital in France during World War I. Dr. Greenough (MGH) served as a surgeon and as executive officer to Dr. Harvey Cushing (Brigham), the leader of the unit. Many of its personnel were volunteers from the Peter Bent Brigham Hospital.

"May 4th Beautiful day; hot, springy, and a hard trial to stay indoors! Dr. Greenough tried for a bit of shell in a lung but failed, …

May 6th … Last night we had our first death— Davalon, ward 255. He had been shot in the left shoulder region. The shell fragment had passed down through his lung and at autopsy was resting on the diaphragm. There were over 3000 cc of old blood in the left pleural cavity and a pneumothorax. We had diagnosed the condition correctly except that we suspected a pneumonia too."—Quotes from A Journal of the Harvard Medical School Unit to the American Ambulance Hospital in Paris, Spring of 1915, by Elliott Carr Cutler, MD.