Civil War Washington

CASE 1699.—Private S. C. Stewart, Co. F, 2d Maine, aged 44 years, was wounded at Bull Run, July 21, 1861, and admitted to the E street Infirmary, at Washington, on the following day. Assistant Surgeon J. W. S. Gourley, U. S. A., contributed the specimen with the following minutes of the case: "The patient was shot in the left elbow, the ball having been extracted previous to his admission. The missile entered at the external and posterior part of the elbow. On the day subsequent to his admission erysipelas set in, and was followed by very profuse suppuration and burrowing of pus nearly midway up the arm. Free incisions were made for the escape of pus, and the arm kept still, with a hope of performing a secondary resection of the elbow, which had been objected to when the patient was first seen. But about one month after the injury he had become so feeble, and his condition was such, that longer delay would have been fatal, and amputation at the middle third was resorted to as the only means of preserving his life. From that moment his condition improved, and the bed-sores which he had healed, he having meanwhile been placed on a water-bed kindly furnished by Dr. T. Foster Jenkins, of the Sanitary Commission. The patient was discharged from hospital, cured, on September 21st." On October 2, 1861, the patient was discharged from service and pensioned. On December 21, 1864, an artificial arm was furnished by Mr. Lincoln, of Boston, who described the case as a "circular amputation at the middle of the arm," and the stump as "healed." This pensioner died on January 23, 1869. The specimen (FIG. 555) consists of the lower half of the left humerus, from which the outer condyle has been carried away, and a large fragment of the shaft split off and afterward partially reunited.