A gruesome and fascinating collection of army photographs is to be made available online thanks to an American archivist.

The images date back to the American Civil War and cover the World Wars and the Vietnam War. Until now hidden in the depths of the National Museum of Health and Medicine in Washington, D.C., the photos are being digitized and published on Flickr by the museum's head archivist Mike Rhode . Not without problems, however: Rove and his colleaugues have been banned from uploading to Flickr by the army, and so have to do the work from home.

Grenade embedded in forehead. Vietnam war.

Patient rehabilitation baseball, 1919-1920. 

Gasoline burns from latrine hole explosion. World War 2.

Woman's leg with trap holding healthy typhus lice for further testing. She was given extra rations during this experiment. World War 2 era.

Boy in Emerson respirator (iron lung) in Herman Keifer Hospital, Detroit, Michigan, due to polio.

Pvt. Benjamin Franklin, Company H, 2nd Regiment, Minnesota, Cavalry. Lost all four limbs to frostbite, December, 1865.

0.50 caliber bullet wound of the face. Injured while while manufacturing an ash tray. Eleven days after injury, patient began hemorrhaging; blood flow so profuse it was impossible to carry out emergency procedures. Patient deceased. World War 2. 4th General Hospital.

Delousing. World War 1.

Sign was posted at the 363rd Station Hospital. Atabrine is an anti-malaria drug. Image not dated.

The museum also has a blog: "A Repository for Bottled Monsters".