Civil War Washington

The history of the following case was forwarded to the Museum, with the specimens, since the close of the war, by the medical officer whose name is attached:

CASE 875.—Charles Gray; mulatto; said to have been a soldier, afterward an officer's servant; admitted to the Washington Asylum, D. C., May 1, 1868. Shortly after admission he received a slight wound over the right supraorbital ridge, followed by symptoms of tetanus, from which, however, he recovered. In the following November, after going about barefoot and being otherwise exposed, he was attacked with pneumonia, and died November 11th. He had no symptoms of any abdominal disease while in hospital, but is supposed to have suffered from diarrhœa during the war. Autopsy ten hours after death: Body well developed; rigor mortis well marked; there was a cicatrix on the right side of the forehead. The entire left lung was completely consolidated; the left pleura was coated with a well-defined layer of coagulated lymph; the left pleural sac contained nearly a pint of straw-colored liquid; the right lung was normal. The pericardium contained an ounce of fluid. The heart was normal, with the exception of an opaque spot on the external surface of the right ventricle. A number of well-defined cicatrices were found over the entire surface of the large intestine.—Assistant Surgeon E. Bentley, U. S. A. [No. 1003, Medical Section, Army Medical Museum, is from this case. The specimen consists of a portion of the colon, showing several cicatrices.]