Civil War Washington

CASE 8.—Private Abram L——, Co. C, 77th New York Volunteers, 3d Brigade, 2d Division, Sixth Corps, aged 23 years, was wounded on May 6th, 1864, at the battle of the Wilderness, by a fragment of shell, which removed the scalp just below the coronal suture, and grazed the bone a little to the left of the median line. It has been impracticable to learn anything of the patient's condition for the next five days, during which he was in transit to the depot for wounded at Belle Plain; but, on May 12th, he was sent up the Potomac on a hospital transport, and was admitted to Armory Square Hospital, Washington, comatose and with his wound in an erysipelatous condition. Diligent and repeated examinations of the records and reports from Armory Square Hospital have failed to discover any account of the progress and treatment of the case. The patient died on May 24th, 1864. A segment of the frontal bone was removed and forwarded to the Army Medical Museum by Surgeon D. W. Bliss, U. S. V. Its external and internal surfaces are perfectly represented in Figures I and II of the foregoing plate. The outer table is not fractured; but is porous and softened where the pericranium was scraped off by the projectile. A meddlesome dissector has chipped off a bit of the external table and diplöe with a scalpel in the endeavor to ascertain post mortem the degree of softening of the bone. A fragment of the inner table, one and one-fourth inches long, is completely detached.