Civil War Washington

CASE 63.—Sergeant Owen Crossman, Co. H, 28th Mich. Vols.; age 45; was admitted February 5, 1865. Diagnosis—quotidian intermittent fever, changed on the 8th to typhoid fever. He had suffered from chills every night for two weeks, but had none after his admission. He was much emaciated and depressed in mind; had a slight dry cough but with easy and natural breathing; uneasy feelings in the upper part of the abdomen; darting pains in the abdomen and thorax; anorexia; thirst; his skin was dry but covered at times with a clammy sweat; bowels regular. On the 14th he had profuse perspiration, delirium and involuntary passages. He died next day. Post-mortem examination twenty-two hours after death: Skin jaundiced. Much effusion under arachnoid at vertex; brain-substance quite hard, most of the vessels having yellow spaces between tracks of black liquid blood; lateral ventricles full of liquid; choroid plexus showing bulbs of yellow liquid about the size of peas along its posterior lower edge; locus niger very dark and broad. A little high-colored but clear serum in the pericardium; small yellow fibrinous clots in the heart. Right lung so congested posteriorly by hypostasis as to sink in water, soft, gray-colored and adherent to walls of chest by many white bands; left lung dark but crepitant posteriorly, firmly adherent. Liver pale and fatty; gall-bladder the size of a butternut; spleen very large and soft, anæmic; kidneys pale.—Third Division Hospital, Alexandria, Va.