Civil War Washington

CASE 165.—Sergeant Frank Donohue, Co. A, 17th Pa. Cav., was admitted Feb. 19, 1863, having been sick for two months with typhoid fever. He was completely deaf. On March 1 he had sore throat, severe headache and constipation. On the 15th his stomach became irritable and there was soreness in the bowels with diarrhœa. Later the stools became dark-looking but less frequent. He died on the 25th. Post-mortem examination forty-eight hours after death: Body well developed and not emaciated. The right lung weighed sixteen ounces and a half and the left twenty-one ounces and a quarter; posteriorly the lower lobe of the right lung was full of blackish-brown fluid, which also filled the bronchi; similar appearances were found in spots in the left lung. The heart weighed nine ounces and contained no clots; the aorta was somewhat contracted, deeply congested, and three inches beyond the semilunar valves was a cicatrix-like puckering with intense surrounding congestion. The liver was pale and weighed fifty-eight ounces and a half; the spleen soft, reddened, weighed twelve ounces and a half; the pancreas natural, three ounces and three-quarters; the stomach healthy. The mucous membrane of the upper part of the small intestine was yellowish and presented several roundish ulcers with well-defined edges in Peyer's patches and one patch, a half inch in diameter, enlarged and indurated; lower down the ulcers were more ragged and apparently did not involve Peyer's patches; in the last fifteen inches of the ileum the mucous membrane was of a reddish-slate color, the solitary glands brownish, and there were ragged excoriating ulcers in many of which was a thick yellowish exudation. The mucous membrane of the large intestine was of a dull slate color, presenting one ulcer on the ileo-cæcal valve, one at the commencement of the cæcum and a third four inches beyond. The kidneys were flabby and much congested.—Ass't Surg. Harrison Allen, U. S. A., Lincoln Hospital, Washington, D. C.