Civil War Washington

CASE 397.—Private C. H. Schellenger, Co. C, 9th New York Heavy Artillery, aged 35 years, was wounded at Petersburg, April 2, 1865, and admitted to the field hospital of the 2d division, Sixth Corps, where Surgeon W. A. Childs, 10th Vermont, recorded: "Shot fracture of right femur; splints applied." Surgeon E. Griswold, U. S. V., reported the patient's entrance into Judiciary Square Hospital April 12th, and the fracture as being located at the "middle third" of the bone. He also stated that the treatment at first consisted of simple dressings, and afterwards splints and sand bags were used, and that "the progress of the case was favorable throughout, the wound being nearly healed about the middle of June, with one and a half inches shortening of the limb." The patient was discharged from service June 22, 1865, and pensioned. Examiner E. Hall, of Auburn, New York, certified, November 25, 1865, to "shot wound through right thigh above the knee, breaking the femur obliquely, the ball coming out on the inside of the leg near the scrotum. Limb shortened and knee quite stiff from thickened cartilage." The Syracuse Examining Board reported, April 5, 1876: * * * "The limb, he alleges, is lame, weak, and subject to spasms upon fatigue." The pensioner was paid June 4, 1879. His photograph, taken at the Army Medical Museum in June, 1865 (Surg. Phot. Series, A. M. M., No. 45), is represented in the wood-cut (FIG. 157).