Civil War Washington

CASE 235.—Private Franklin Harsh, Co. G, 7th Ohio, was wounded at Chancellorsville, May 3, 1863, and was taken to the hospital of the Twelfth Corps, where Surgeon H. E. Goodman, 28th Pennsylvania, recorded the injury as a "gunshot penetration wound of the abdomen and hip." The field record gives no details of the symptoms of treatment. The patient was sent to Aquia Creek by rail, and thence, on a hospital transport, to Washington, and was admitted into Armory Square Hospital. There he remained for a long time, with fæcal fistula; but no report of the particulars of the case was made. The case arresting the attention of Surgeon J. H. Brinton, U. S. V., he directed Hospital Steward Stauch to make the colored drawings from which the chromolithograph opposite (PLATE IV) is copied. The drawing appears to have been finished September 13, 1863, at which date, in a letter to Dr. Brinton, Surgeon D. W. Bliss, reports that "a minié ball passed through the right hypochondriac region, making its exit through the ilium, near the posterior fourth of the crest. The posterior opening permits the passage of fæcal matter and of gas. The patient is improving daily, the opening into the gut contracting steadily, and the case promises a favorable termination." On April 28, 1864, the register of Armory Square Hospital shows a certificate from Dr. Bliss that Harsh was "discharged for artificial anus from gunshot wound, incidental to the service,—disability total." On March 15, 1867, Examining Surgeon J. Holloway, Wabash, Indiana, reports of the pensioner: "His wound is on the right side, the ball having passed through the bowel above and to the right of the crest of the ilium. The contents of the bowels, when fluid, frequently pass out of both orifices made by the ball. He is entirely incapacitated for manual labor, his disability total." On June 6, 1866, Harsh's pension was increased to fifteen dollars monthly, and from June 8, 1872, to eighteen dollars monthly. It cannot be learned that any operative interference, with a view of closing the fistulæ, has been attempted.