Civil War Washington

Case from the case-book of the SATTERLEE HOSPITAL, West Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Surgeon Isaac I. Hayes, U. S. V., in charge. Autopsy made by Dr. Joseph Leidy, Professor of Anatomy in the University of Pennsylvania. At the time of the organization of this hospital a number of the leading teachers and medical practitioners of Philadelphia volunteered their services as ward physicians, and accordingly received contracts as acting assistant surgeons. To Dr. Leidy was assigned the task of conducting the autopsies, and a report of the results was forwarded by him, at the time, to the Surgeon General. This report was accompanied y a number of valuable pathological specimens, which have been preserved in the Army Medical Museum. . . . [Many] patients were sent to Satterlee hospital from the Army of the Potomac . . . and had contracted their disease . . . during the ill-fated Peninsular campaign.

CASE 172.—Private James Litzenberg, company A, 26th Pennsylvania volunteers; age 40; German; admitted from Washington, D. C., December 12, 1862. Diarrhœa. [The register of Carver hospital, Washington, shows that this man was admitted to that hospital November 20, 1862—diagnosis rheumatism—and transferred to another hospital December 11th.] Died, January 22, 1863. Autopsy the same day: The body looked as if the patient had been, before his illness, of great vigor and muscular strength, but was now emaciated. Brain healthy. Right lung with old adhesions to the costal pleura; the apex with a tubercle the size of a marrow-fat pea and several small ulcerated cavities; left lung with a few tubercles about the size of pepper grains in its apex and scattered at the back part of the upper lobe. Pericardium with about a teacupful of liquor. Heart flabby, with a large white clot in the right ventricle. Spleen flabby, reddened, and roughened on the surface, (apparently the evidences of an old inflammation;) structure very soft purplish red. Solitary and agminated glands of the ileum slightly enlarged, and opaque white. Colon with the mucous membrane soft, grayish, with a few red streaks of inflammation and a few ecchymosed spots. Remaining organs apparently healthy.—Acting Assistant Surgeon Joseph Leidy. [Nos. 84 and 85, Medical Section, Army Medical Museum, are from this case. The specimens are successive portions of the ileum, showing pin-head enlargement of the solitary follicles and slight thickening of Peyer's patches.]