Full-length standing albumen CDV studio portrait of Prvt. George Ruoss, Co. G, 7th New York Veteran Infantry. [Washington, D.C.]: [William H. Bell], [1867]. 

Red ink inscription to mount recto reads: "Contr. Photo. 749 / Ruoss 7th N York"; period ink inscription to verso, "Geo. Ruoss", along with modern pencil identification "George Ruoss 7th NY". 

An arresting medical portrait of Private George Ruoss (alt. Roos, Rouse). Standing with support, he is captured nude from the waist down to show his wounded leg, which was also suffering from osteomyelitis. Ruoss had enlisted on 10 September 1864 as a private, mustering into Company G of the 7th New York Veteran Infantry, a regiment whose enlistment was dedicated to the Siege of Petersburg. 

The photographer was almost certainly William Bell (1831-1910), a career photographer who knew all too well the horrors of war as he was a veteran of both the Mexican and Civil wars. In 1865, he was appointed the chief photographer of the Army Medical Museum, which had been created by the Surgeon General in April 1862 "to improve the care of the sick and wounded soldier by making available for study pathological specimens of war wounds and diseases." Bell's photographs served not only as teaching aids for educating physicians but also for the soldiers themselves when pursuing disability compensation. 

This photograph was published in volume III of the Museum's monumental Photographic Catalogue of the Surgical Section, which also detailed the specifics of his wound and care: "Private George Ruoss...aged twenty-seven years, was wounded at the South Side Railroad, near Petersburg, Virginia, on March 31st, 1865, by a conoidal musket ball, which struck the anterior and outer aspect of the right thigh...comminuting portions of the upper and middle thirds of the femur, and passed out posteriorly about the middle of the gluteal fold." After his initial treatment, he was transferred to a hospital in Washington, D.C., where he was still a patient in "generally feeble condition" two and half years later when this portrait was taken. 

References: 

Maria Morris Hambourg. The Waking Dream: Photography's First Century: Selections from the Gilman Paper Company Collection. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1993. no. 143, p. 322. 

Army Medical Museum. Catalogue of the United States Army Medical Museum. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1866, p. 576.

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