Civil War Washington

Case from the case-book of the SECOND DIVISION of the ALEXANDRIA HOSPITAL, Virginia, Surgeon Edwin Bentley, U. S. V., in charge. Autopsy was made and recorded in the case-book by Acting Assistant Surgeon Thomas Bowen:

CASE 454.—Private Jeremiah Grinder, company H, 6th Pennsylvania heavy artillery; age 22; admitted from the field November 14, 1864. Cholera morbus. Died, November 15th. Autopsy twenty-eight hours after death: Rigor mortis very great; body muscular, well developed; no emaciation; extensive suggillation posteriorly. Head, neck and spinal column not examined. There were slight pleuritic adhesions posteriorly on both sides. Both lungs were engorged with blood, and did not collapse when the sternum was removed. The heart was normal; there were large, very firm yellow clots in both auricles, and small ones in both ventricles; the auricular clot on the left side extended about six inches into the branches of the left pulmonary veins; these veins emptied into the heart by a single opening. The omentum was congested. The liver was large, but otherwise healthy; the gall-bladder contained about an ounce of dark bile. The spleen was normal. The pancreas a little congested, but otherwise healthy. Both kidneys were congested. The mesenteric glands were somewhat congested and enlarged. The mucous membrane of the ileum, for twelve inches from the ileo-cæcal valve, was thickened, inflamed, and ulcerated; it was very dark colored, and appeared almost gangrenous in many places. The mucous membrane of the colon and rectum was inflamed and ulcerated; the ulcers had ragged edges, and were arranged in narrow bands around the circumference of the gut; in other parts of the mucous membrane there were whitish deposits of pseudomembranous lymph.—Acting Assistant Surgeon Thomas Bowen.