Civil War Washington

Case was forwarded, with specimens, to the Army Medical Museum from the JUDICIARY SQUARE HOSPITAL, Washington, D. C., Assistant Surgeon Elias J. Marsh, U. S. A., in charge.

CASE 263.—Private Charles Fehle, company B, 1st New Jersey volunteers; admitted February 15, 1863, with chronic diarrhœa. [It appears from the register of the hospital of the 1st Division, 6th Corps, that this man was admitted to that hospital January 20th, and sent to Washington February 13th; the diagnosis recorded is typhoid fever.] He had been taken sick in the army of the Potomac. Died, February 16th. Autopsy twelve hours after death: Body much emaciated. The brain and spinal marrow were not examined. The left lung was healthy; the right lung was very thin, and compressed against the anterior and upper part of the thorax by about two quarts of moderately thick not offensive pus. The pleura costalis was covered by a thick pseudomembrane. The heart was healthy. The liver and kidneys were also healthy. The spleen was very small. The stomach and small intestine were healthy. The mucous membrane of the descending colon and sigmoid flexure was thickened, softened, and presented numerous follicular ulcers from an eighth to half an inch in diameter.—Assistant Surgeon E. J. Marsh, U. S. A. [Nos. 218 and 219, Medical Section, Army Medical Museum, are from this case. The specimens are successive portions of the colon, presenting numerous follicular ulcers, some of which, in No. 219, have coalesced into an irregular excavating ulcer of considerable size.]