Civil War Washington

CASE 60.—Private J. Wagoner, Co. F, 116th Pennsylvania, aged 23 years, was wounded at Petersburg, June 22, 1864, and admitted to the field hospital of the 1st division, Second Corps, where Surgeon D. H. Houston, 2d Delaware, recorded: "Flesh wound of left thigh by a minié ball." Surgeon G. L. Pancoast, U. S. V., contributed the pathological specimen (Cat. Surg. Sect., 1866, p. 333, Spec. 3260) with the following notes of the case: "The patient entered Finley Hospital, Washington, July 1st, with shot wound through left knee joint. The bone was not injured. He died July 17, 1864. Two days before death signs of pneumonia presented themselves. An autopsy was made by Acting Assistant Surgeon G. H. Hopkins, who found extensive inflammation extending all around the joint and its neighboring parts. The femur and tibia were denuded of cartilage around the edges. In the cavity of the thorax there was considerable pleuritic adhesion, with effusion of thick pus, the lungs themselves being very much congested and hepatized—in fact, the lungs were diseased throughout their entire extent. There was also effusion both in the pleura and pericardium." The specimen consists of the bones of the injured knee joint.