Civil War Washington

CASE 182.—Private William Gibbings, Co. F, 5th Mich.; age 35; was admitted April 21, 1864, with typhoid fever, and died May 12. Post-mortem examination twenty-three hours after death: The brain weighed fifty ounces. The mucous membrane of the larynx and trachea was somewhat congested. The right lung weighed thirty-two ounces, its lower lobe hepatized red, its upper lobe gray and the pleural surfaces adherent; the left lung weighed nineteen ounces. The heart was flabby; there were three drachms of light-red fluid in the pericardium. The œsophagus was healthy; the cardiac end of the stomach reddish-brown and much softened; the mucous membrane of the duodenum much congested; the solitary follicles of the ileum and Peyer's patches ulcerated, some of the ulcers penetrating to the peritoneum; a small triangular piece of bone was found in the appendix vermiformis; the mucous membrane of the large intestine was much congested and softened. The liver, fifty-nine ounces and a half, was flabby and anæmic; there were six drachms of gamboge-colored liquid in the gall bladder; the spleen eleven ounces and a half, was pulpy, its capsule easily separated and presenting on its superior surface a "round white body resembling bone." The right kidney weighed five ounces, the left five ounces and a half; both very soft and flabby.—Act. Ass't Surg. A. Ansell, Lincoln Hospital, Washington, D.C.