Civil War Washington

CASE.—Private W. H. C——, Co. H, 31st Georgia Regiment, wounded at Fredericksburg, December 13th, 1862, was admitted to Carver Hospital, Washington, and died exhausted on January 8th, 1863. A conoidal musket ball had entered the back on the left side, about three inches from the point of the acromion process, penetrated the spine of the scapula just below the crest, passed inward and forward, and fractured the clavicle at the point where the conoid ligament is attached. From this point, its course was traced behind the large blood vessels of the neck and between the œsophagus and spinal column. Here an abscess was formed which reached upward five or six inches along the spine and downward in the mediastinum to the bifurcation of the trachea, where the ball was found point downward and resting against the right bronchial tube. An opening was found communicating with the abscess and the right pleural cavity. The track of the ball and the large abscess were filled with pus, and clots of blood undergoing putrefaction. Portions of the left scapula and clavicle were contributed to the Army Medical Museum, with the above account, by Surgeon O. A. Judson, U. S. V. The specimen is partly represented in the adjoining cut (FIG. 220).