CASE.—Private William L. B——, Co. I, 21st
Georgia, aged 22 years, received a gunshot
penetrating wound of the chest at Fort Stevens,
District of Columbia, July 12th, 1864. He was
admitted, on the 14th, to Lincoln Hospital,
Washington. When admitted, he was suffering
intense pain in the chest; retention of urine and
fæces; total paralysis, in lower extremities, of
both motion and sensation; breathing, labored and
painful; pulse, 100. Cold water dressings were
applied, and opiates administered. He died on July
15th, 18651864. At the autopsy a wound was found
directly over the center of the left clavicle,
made, apparently, by a bullet, but, on attempting
to introduce the finger, it was found to be
closed. The first rib was fractured at its
greatest curvature, but was not entirely broken
across. There was one hundred and eight ounces of
bloody fluid in the thoracic cavity. The right
lung, with the exception of a few recent adhesions
on the posterior aspect of the lower lobe, was
healthy. The left lung had a hole through
it about one inch from the apex, through which the
finger could be introduced. It was very much
compressed by the fluid. The ball entered at the
attachment of the rib to the third dorsal
vertebra, the left transverse process of which it
fractured, and was found lying against the left
lamina of the fourth dorsal vertebra, which it had
fractured from its pedicle, and by pushing it
outward and backward had fractured the lamina of
the opposite side and the spinous process. The
pathological specimen is numbered 2343, Section I,
A. M. M., and was contributed, with a history of
the case, by Acting Assistant Surgeon H. M. Dean.