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 392.—Private William Jenkins, company C, 44th North Carolina (rebel) volunteers; admitted from Old Capitol prison October 20, 1863. Chronic diarrhœa. Died, December 31st. Autopsy twelve hours after death: Apparent age 21. The pharynx and larynx were healthy. The lungs were congested posteriorly; the middle lobe of the right lung was in a state of gray hepatization. The pericardium contained two ounces and a half of fluid. The heart was healthy. The liver was healthy. The spleen measured seven inches and a half by four; it was very firm. The pancreas was healthy. The kidneys were rather small and pale. The small intestine was healthy. The cæcum was somewhat congested. The ascending and transverse colon were not diseased; the descending colon and rectum were ulcerated and coated with a diphtheritic exudation.—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.