Civil War Washington

CASE 954.—Dislocation at the elbow.—Private H. Finley, Co. H, 5th Connecticut, aged 29 years, suffered a dislocation of the right elbow while going to Stevenson, Alabama, October 5, 1864, on a railroad train, which was attacked by the enemy and brought to a sudden stop, causing him to be violently thrown to the ground. He was treated in the field hospitals of the Twentieth Corps until the arrival of the troops at Savannah, when he was placed on board of a hospital steamer and conveyed to McDougall Hospital, Fort Schuyler, New York Harbor. Assistant Surgeon S. H. Orton, U. S. A., certified to the patient's discharge from service March 13, 1865, by reason of uselessness of the right arm from an "unreduced luxation of the ulna backward upon the humerus." Examining Surgeon W. W. Potter, of Washington, D. C., March 29, 1869, certified to the following disability: "A fall upon the right elbow while in a semi-flexed position has driven the olecranon process of the ulna upward between the condyles of the humerus, at the same time forcing them apart. Considerable deformity is the result, with inability to flex the forearm beyond a right angle or to extend it perfectly. He has very little strength in the arm; its motions are circumscribed and general usefulness seriously impaired." Examiner M. Burton, of Richmond, Virginia, reported, September 23, 1873, that "the dislocation still exists, the joint is inflexible and the limb useless for manual labor. The fingers have some power of flexion and extension." This pensioner was paid June 4, 1881.