Civil War Washington

Case from the case-book of LINCOLN HOSPITAL, Washington, D. C.; Surgeon Henry Bryant, U. S. V., in charge to May, 1863.

CASE 364.—Private William L. Snyder, company A, 12th United States infantry; admitted April 20, 1863. Chronic rheumatism. [This man appears on the hospital register of the 12th United States infantry, taken sick April 6th—diarrhœa—sent to general hospital April 19th.] Died, June 2d, of chronic diarrhœa. Autopsy twenty-four hours after death: Height five feet seven inches; body emaciated; rigor mortis slight. The brain was healthy and weighed fifty-four ounces. The mucous membrane of the œsophagus was firm and of a light-purple color. The trachea contained much bronchial secretion; its mucous membrane was purplish. Both lungs were pale stone-gray externally, lake-red on section, and yielded on pressure a fine bronchial secretion mixed with venous blood; they were permeated with air throughout; on the posterior surface of the lower lobe of the right lung was a small patch of old lymph; the right lung weighed nineteen ounces, the left twenty-four ounces. No fluid was found in the pericardium. The heart weighed nine ounces; in its right side was a very small fibrinous clot; in the left side large mixed clots which extended into the aorta; the valves were healthy. The liver weighed forty-five ounces; the gall bladder contained six drachms of very dark-colored bile. The pancreas weighed three ounces and a quarter; it was healthy, and of a pale flesh-color. The spleen weighed six ounces. Both kidneys were pale; the right weighed seven ounces, the left seven ounces and a half. The mucous membrane of the fundus of the stomach was blackish, the rest mottled gray and crimson. The small intestine was healthy, but much distended with gas; Peyer's patches healthy and not ulcerated. The mucous membrane of the large intestine was slate-colored, but there were no ulcers except one or two small ones near the anus. The transverse colon was much distended with gas. The omentum small, almost denuded of fat, and pushed up toward the diaphragm.—Assistant Surgeon Harrison Allen, U. S. A.⃰

⃰ September 14, 1864, Dr. Allen presented to the Pathological Society of Philadelphia a brief "Synopsis of Autopsies made at Lincoln General Hospital," to which the reader is referred.—(Proceedings of the Pathological Society of Philadelphia, in the American Journal of the Medical Sciences, January, 1865, page 133.) In this paper he analyzes the appearances observed in forty-one cases of diarrhœa and dysentery, thirty-five of fever, twenty-one of pneumonia, and five of diphtheria. The notes of Dr. Allen's autopsies, from which the accounts here presented have been condensed, were not contained in the case-books of Lincoln hospital turned in to the Surgeon General's Office at the close of the war, but have since been copied into them from the originals, loaned for the purpose.