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The early days of modern medicine, before penicillin and anesthesia, can seem gruesome by today's standards. But archivist and collector of medical photography, Dr. Stanley Burns, thinks its important to look back at the early days of medicine understand how far modern medicine has come in just over 100 years.

Burns, the founder and archivist of the Burns Archive, has lots of evidence about how crude early medical treatments could be at the beginning of the last century. From electroshock for blindness to scoliosis cures that look torturous, the haunting photographs from the Burns archive can be beautiful and scary reminders of how rudimentary medicine was just a century ago.

The doctors 100 years ago were just as smart and interested in helping their patients as we are today, Burns told ABC News. The problem was they labored under inferior knowledge and technology.

Burns photography archive includes thousands of pictures ranging from early medical operations to Civil War-era photos of wounded soldiers, some of which were featured in a show at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

His newest exhibition is decidedly more macabre. Its a collection of memorial photography, which are pictures of the deceased for loved ones, mainly from the turn of the 19th century.

The photographs of the posed deceased are being featured at the Morbid Anatomy Museum in Brooklyn, New York, until this January.

Cinemax

PHOTO: On "The Knick" an ambulance circa 1900 is a simple horse drawn carriage.

Earlier this year, Burns incredible knowledge about the birth of modern medicine has been utilized at his newest side-job -- medical adviser on the Cinemax drama The Knick.

Read more from the original source:

See the Birth of Modern Medicine in These Photos