Civil War Washington

CASE 307.—Private Charles Lackey, Co. E, 7th Wisconsin, aged 30 years, was struck, at Spottsylvania​, May 12, 1864, by a conoidal musket ball, which entered in front at the upper part of the right thigh and produced a comminuted fracture of the femur through the trochanters, and extending downward nearly half the length of the shaft of the bone, and then lodged in the muscles at the posterior part of the thigh. After a fatiguing journey to Belle Plain, to which most of the wounded from Spottsylvania​ were unavoidably subjected, Lackey was conveyed on a hospital steamer to Washington, and was received at Judiciary Square Hospital on May 18th. The wounded limb was much swollen. The sharp extremity of the lower fragment of the femur had lacerated the muscles, and there was profuse suppuration with burrowing of pus throughout the thigh. The fracture was believed to extend into the joint. The patient earnestly demanded that an operation should be performed for his relief. His condition was unpromising, for he was suffering from surgical fever of an intense character. A consultation of surgeons decided, however, that, without operative interference, the case would prove inevitably and speedily fatal; and as the extensive fracture of the shaft of the femur and the purulent infiltration of the thigh precluded excision, amputation at the hip joint was determined on. On May 21st anæsthesia was induced by sulphuric ether, and Assistant Surgeon Alexander Ingram, U. S. A., performed the operation by the antero-posterior flap method. After the operation the patient reacted but partially. After removal to the ward he was plied with beef-tea and stimulants and restoratives; but he continued to sink, and died on the following day, May 22, 1864, twenty hours after the operation.²

² The abstract of this case is compiled from register and Report of Surgical Operations of the Judiciary Square Hospital, Washington. The case is noted at p. 50 of Circular 6, S. G. O., 1865, as CASE 11. The age is correctly stated at "19" years, while in Circular No. 7, S. G. O, 1867, pp. 37, 62, by a clerical inadvertence the age is given at "30" years. See also LÜNING (A.), Ueber die Blutung bei der Exarticulation des Oberschenkels, Zürich, 1877, Fall 328, S. 97.