Civil War Washington

CASE 1508.—Corporal H. Darragh, Co. K, 106th Pennsylvania, aged 40 years, was wounded at Petersburg, June 18, 1864, and, after treatment in the base hospital at City Point, was sent to Washington and admitted to Lincoln Hospital. Acting Assistant Surgeon J. F. Burdick reported: "The above soldier had undergone resection of the head of the humerus, and I saw him but once, and that was just previous to his death. The resection was performed prior to his admission to this hospital. He was very much emaciated; respiration was difficult; the arm was gangrenous. Death occurred July 14th. There is no record of treatment or diet. Medical Cadet Strickler informs me that he has had fifteen drops of tincture of chloride of iron three times a day, and simple water-dressing to the wound. Brandy was daily administered, at frequent intervals." The autopsy was made, on the day of the patient's death, by Acting Assistant Surgeon H. M. Dean, who contributed a pathological preparation from the case, with the following history: "Body is very much emaciated; post-mortem rigidity not very well marked; height five feet seven inches. The external surface of the right arm is gangrenous for a distance of six inches above the elbow. He has had a wound in the right shoulder, for which the head of the humerus has been resected. The upper extremity of the humerus, which was denuded for about half an inch, was drawn up by the muscles in contact with the glenoid cavity. The coracoid process of right scapula was also fractured. Wound slightly gangrenous. Right lung firmly adherent to the walls of the thorax and to the diaphragm. On section of the upper and lower lobes a large amount of a frothy fluid exuded. The lining membrane of the bronchi was very much congested. Left lung healthy. Right lung weighed twenty-one ounces; left, eleven and a half ounces. Spleen very much enlarged, firm, not pulpy, weighed nine ounces. Pericardium healthy. Heart: both ventricles contained a fibrinous clot; heart weighed nine ounces. Liver weighed fifty-one ounces, small and contracted; measured seven and a half by six and a quarter and three and a half inches; mottled and convoluted, more resembling the brain than the liver." The specimen consists² of "portions of right scapula and humerus, from a subject on whom excision of the head of the humerus had been performed in the field. The wound was gangrenous at the time of death, and the specimen shows no reparative effort."

² Specimen 2838, Catalogue of the Surgical Section, Army Medical Museum, 1866, p. 85.