Civil War Washington

CASE.—Private Thomas B——, Co. F, 122d Ohio Volunteers, aged 37 years, received a gunshot wound of the back, at the Wilderness, May 6th, 1864; the ball entered over the transverse process of the dorsal vertebra and lodged in the bone. He was sent to Washington, and admitted, on the next day, to Mount Pleasant Hospital. On May 15th, he was transferred to Jarvis Hospital, Baltimore, where he died on July 20th, 1864, from spinal meningitis. At the necropsy, the ball was found to have struck the body and fractured the transverse process of the dorsal vertebra. The bone was necrosed. The membranes of the spine, for two inches above and below the injury, showed unequivocal marks of intense inflammation and ulceration. The pathological specimen was contributed, with a history of the case, by Acting Assistant Surgeon B. B. Miles, Curator of Jarvis Hospital. It consists of a portion of the spinal cord, partially disorganized, as represented in the adjoining wood-cut (FIG. 191).