Civil War Washington

CASE.—Corporal George W. M——, Co. B, 53d Pennsylvania Volunteers, aged 19 years, was admitted into Harewood Hospital, Washington, June 7th, 1864, having been wounded at Cold Harbor on the 3d. A conoidal musket ball had entered near the inferior angle of the left scapula, and passing downward, inward, and forward, through the left lung, lodged in the vertebral canal after fracturing the transverse process of the seventh dorsal vertebra. The patient suffered from retention of urine and paraplegia; pneumonia also complicated the case. Owing to the extreme prostration, no active antiphlogistic measures were employed. The patient was kept in bed; fed on beef-tea, and quinine with whiskey, milk punch, etc. Stimulating frictions were frequently applied to the legs and hips, and the chest was enveloped in an oil-skin jacket. He died on June 19th, 1864. At the autopsy the ball was found imbedded in the substance of the seventh dorsal vertebra, encroaching upon the medulla spinalis. The lungs at their bases were hepatized, and near the apices were filled with dark, frothy fluid. The pathological specimen, represented in the adjoining wood-cut, was contributed to the Army Medical Museum, with the particulars of the case, by Surgeon R. B. Bontecou, U. S. V.