Civil War Washington

Case from the case-book of LINCOLN HOSPITAL, Washington, D. C.; Assistant Surgeon Roberts Bartholow, U. S. A., in charge from August 21st to December, 1863.

CASE 384.—Private John Finch, company A, 47th North Carolina (rebel) volunteers; admitted October 25, 1863. Chronic diarrhœa. Died, November 26th. Autopsy: Apparent age 48; height five feet seven inches; some rigor mortis; body very much emaciated. The brain was apparently healthy, and weighed fifty-two ounces and a half; the ventricles contained two drachms of turbid serum tinged with blood. The trachea was slightly purplish toward its bifurcation, but pale elsewhere. The right lung weighed sixteen ounces; the posterior portion of its upper and the whole of its lower lobe were in the stage of red hepatization; the left lung weighed fifteen ounces; it was crepitant throughout; its bronchial tubes contained a pus-like secretion. The pericardium contained a drachm of fluid. The heart was healthy; there was a small white clot in the right side, none in the left. The liver was dark-brown in color, of normal consistence, and weighed forty ounces; the gall-bladder contained ten drachms of molasses-colored viscid bile. The spleen was firm, of a dark mahogany color, and weighed four ounces and a half. The pancreas weighed two ounces. The kidneys were healthy; the right weighed three ounces, the left three and a half. The large intestine was extensively ulcerated, presenting the appearance of one large roughened ulcer.—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.