Civil War Washington

CASE.—Corporal William E. S——, Co. F, 84th Pennsylvania Volunteers, aged 25 years, was struck at the battle of the Wilderness, May 5th, 1864, by a musket ball on the forehead, a little to the left of the median line. He was taken to the third division field hospital of the Second Corps, and was thence sent to City Point, and transferred on a hospital transport to Washington, and on May 16th admitted to Mount Pleasant Hospital, Washington, D. C., and on May 27th sent to Chester Hospital, Pennsylvania. The wound was discharging sanious matter, and was much inflamed and painful. There was considerable fever, which increased on the 29th. On the following day the patient became delirious, and died on May 31st, 1864, from meningitis. The pathological specimen, which is represented in the adjoining wood-cuts, (FIG. 72 and FIG. 73,) consists of the body of the frontal bone, with a fragment of lead impacted near the centre and to the left of the median line. An ovoid plate of the external table, measuring one by two inches, is slightly discolored, and surrounded by a groove of demarcation, external to which the bone is cribriform. A plate of the inner table, measuring one square inch, is detached by three of its sides, and driven inward to the depth of two lines at its free edges. Two fissures, each one and a fourth inches in length, run backward and outward, and there is a slight deposit of new osseous material on the inner surface. The specimen was contributed by Surgeon T. H. Bache, U. S. V.