Civil War Washington

CASE.—Private George Taylor, Co. B, 157th Pennsylvania Volunteers, aged 18 years, was wounded at the battle of the Weldon Railroad, Virginia, August 20th, 1864, by a round musket ball, which entered the cranial cavity through the right lambdoid suture at a point about two inches from the median line. He was admitted to the hospital of the 4th division, Fifth Corps; thence, was sent to City Point, and, on August 28th, was admitted to the 3d division hospital at Alexandria, Virginia. Hernia cerebri protruded through the opening. The treatment consisted in the use of cold water applications to the head and counter irritation to the feet. The patient died, however, on August 29th, 1864. At the autopsy, seventeen hours after death, the perforation of the skull was found to be circular and larger at the inner than at the outer table; the dura mater was firmly adherent along the longitudinal fissure, especially on the right side; the arachnoid of the same side was thickened by numerous tufts of lymph, with but little effusion beneath it. The meninges at the base of the brain around the pons Varolii, over the fourth ventricle and about the crura cerebelli were, likewise, thickened and adherent to the brain. The brain itself was hardened and pale, except in the vicinity of the wound, where it was of a rich cream color and evidently degenerating into pus. On section the lateral ventricles were found filled with a fluid containing floating tufts of lymph, a thick deposit of which laid upon the choroid plexuses and walls of the ventricle. A round ball, half sliced open, and a disk of bone had lodged at a depth of one and a half inches in the right posterior occipital lobe, a little below the digital cavity, which had been involved in the inflammation. The case is reported by Surgeon E. Bentley, U. S. V.