Civil War Washington

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, 1865​. 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.