Staff at the Otis Historical Archives of the National Museum of Health and Medicine in Washington DC have been uploading their favourites to Flickr. It is, by turns, a fantastic, disgusting, educational and amazing depository of images.

The army is far from happy with it and has blocked them for some bizarre reason, so they have started taking the pictures home to scan them. There's nothing secret in the pictures - they date from the American Civil War, but there's plenty interesting about them.

Some of them are also quite gross (watch out for the one of the dislocated eyeball, the close-ups of the skin graft and pictures of how to get shrapnel out of wounds - yuk) but there are fascinating details on early rehabilitation techniques, treatment of mass-influenza outbreaks and life as an army medic.

They've migrated most of the pictures to THIS Flickr account - click on 'profile' and you'll see other links and updates to their pictures. If you want to read their blog, it's here.