POPULAR CIVIL WAR GENERAL VISITS HIS LEG BONES EVERY DAY THANKS TO NATIONAL MUSEUM OF HEALTH AND MEDICINE

For many years on the anniversary of the amputation of his lower right leg during the second day of the Battle of Gettysburg, Union Army Maj. Gen. Daniel E. Sickles would visit his leg bones on display at the Army Medical Museum.

Today, the amputated tibia and fibula are some of the most visited specimens on display at the National Museum of Health and Medicine in the exhibit, "To Bind Up the Nation's Wounds: Medicine During the Civil War," which documents Civil War medicine through the eyes of battlefield surgeons and the stories of wounded.

Now, due to the cooperation of the museum, visitors to Ripley's Museum at Jackson Square, New Orleans are able to see a wax replica of Sickles depicting him as he would visit an exhibit that features his amputated leg bones.

Using four photographs supplied by the museum's Otis Historical Archives, a Ripley's curator used one of their historical wax figures with some similarity to Sickles to create the new exhibit. Sickles has been positioned as though he is looking at a wall display that features his leg bones.

Interestingly, one of the images supplied by the museum used in the new Ripley's exhibit is a copy of an old Ripley's cartoon of Sickles visiting his leg bones in the museum.

Ripley's in New Orleans is located at 620 Decatur Street and is open daily from 10 a.m. to 11 p.m. The web site is www.ripleys.com/newo.htm and the telephone number is 504-586-1233.

Sickles is known to historians and amateur Civil War buffs as the Union's Third Army Corps commander, struck by a 12-pound cannonball while on horseback during the battle of Gettysburg on July 2, 1863. Sickles quieted his horse, dismounted, and was seen smoking a large cigar as he was carried from the field on a stretcher to a shelter where Surgeon Thomas Sims amputated the severely fractured lower right leg just above the knee.

Instead of having it buried with the rest of the amputated limbs, Sims wrapped and preserved the leg "for whatever disposition Sickles might later want to make of it." In accordance with the U.S. Army Surgeon General's orders at the time that directed medical officers in the field to collect "specimens of morbid anatomy… together with projectiles and foreign bodies removed" and to forward them to the newly founded museum for study, shortly after the operation the Army Medical Museum received Sickles' leg in a small coffin-shaped box bearing a visiting card with the message "With the compliments of Major General D.E.S."

The amputation healed rapidly and by September of 1863 Sickles returned to military service. Until his death in 1914, Sickles was known to take delight in bringing friends to visit his leg bones every year on the anniversary of the amputation to the museum, located at the Ford's Theater building on 10th Street NW until 1887 and then when it was moved to the Old Red Brick building on the north side of B. Street, (now Independence Avenue) and 7th St. at the site of the current Hirshhorn Museum on the Mall.

Sickles' exploits extended beyond the Civil War. He was the first defendant to successfully use the temporary insanity defense in the United States. In 1859, Sickles was found not guilty of the murder of his wife's lover, Philip Barton Key, the son of the composer of the national anthem. Sickles had shot Key in Lafayette Square in Washington in a jealous rage after learning of the affair. Sickles served as a secret agent for President Lincoln and was appointed Ambassador to Spain by President Grant.

The National Museum of Health and Medicine, founded to study and improve medical conditions during the American Civil War, is an element of the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology. Its specimens and artifacts were the first museum collection in the country and are currently the only in Washington, D.C. to be registered by the U.S. Department of the Interior as a National Historic Landmark.

The Secretary of the Interior, who has designated only 2,340 districts, sites, buildings, and structures for listing in the National Register, selected the museum's collection because of its "exceptional value in commemorating and illustrating the history of the United States." The museum is open every day except Dec. 25 from 10 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. The museum is located at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, 6900 Georgia Ave. and Elder Street, NW, Washington, D.C. The web site is www.nmhm.washingtondc.museum and the telephone number is 202-782-2200. Admission and parking are free.