The Bellevue Photographic Department was the first of its kind in a civilian hospital. Earlier photographic commissions could be found attached to American military hospitals that cared for wounded Union soldiers during the Civil War, but these precedents came under the authority and pay of the Army Medical Museum founded by Surgeon General Dr. William Hammond in 1862. In France, Dr. Montméja (1841-?) at Hôpital Saint-Louis was photographing for Dr. Alfred Hardy's (1811–1893) atlas of skin diseases but it was not until