Click on the image of the wounded police in the Desplaines Street station to read the testimony of physicians who treated the wounded officers. The image is discussed in the "Tending the Wounded" entry in the "The Fuse is Lit" section of this Act.

The grisly particulars of the terrible damage done by the Haymarket bomb and the ensuing riot were spelled out in dispassionate yet shocking detail at the trial by several of the physicians who attended the victims. Included here is the testimony of Dr. John B. Murphy and Dr. Theodore Bluthardt. As they explain, Murphy was a surgeon at the County Hospital on the staff at Rush Medical College; Bluthardt was the County Physician.

This testimony shows the terrible effects of a dynamite bomb on the human body. It also indicates, however, that the police suffered bullet as well as shrapnel wounds. The defense lawyers tried to get another witness to point out that at least some of these bullets matched those used by the police, in order to prove that, the reports of Bonfield and other officers notwithstanding, their men had fired wildly into their own ranks.

The grim inventory of punctured organs, fragmented bones, mangled faces, advanced infections, amputated limbs, and appalling cries of unspeakable pain—supplemented by the display in the courtroom of bloody police uniforms and an arsenal of alleged anarchist weapons—could not help but have the effect on the jury that the prosecution hoped it would.