The Missouri in the Civil War Message Board

Re: Battle Death From Severe Bruising?

Oh my what a story. I can weave several scenarios to make this fit but I will make some very dangerous assumptions.

A fall from that height, may in fact, have resulted in a fractured pelvis that may have resulted in "severe bruising" i.e. a significant bleeding event into soft tissue. However even that would be unusual as a cause of death 3 months after the fact, usually a major artery leaks and death comes from slow exsanguination over minutes to several hours.

Much more likely and much more common, even today, is deep vein thrombosis in the leg(s) and / or pelvis which can result in redness and swelling of the lower extremities. DVT is common after being immobilized, even on an airplane flight, or wounded and laid up in bed. The endpoint which causes death is either cellulitis/infection in the extremities, uncommon today but very likely then, or pulmonary embolism. PE frequently causes sudden death, otherwise known as blood clot in lung. What happens is a chunk of clot breaks off from the extremity, whizzes up the inferior vena cava, passes through the right side of the heart and then due to it's size blocks off a chunk of blood flow through the pulmonary artery to the lung. No blood flow into lung = no oxygen exchange. Kind of like choking to death but the blockage is to blood vs airflow.

I've seen legs and feet the color of ripe plums from chronic DVT, usually when hospitalized for treatment of cellulitis and blood thinner failure.

Soooo.... considering common things are more likely than uncommon, I'd vote for DVT to infection for a lingering death over days or hours, or DVT to PE, if death occurred suddenly. Take your pick, we'll never know for sure.

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Battle Death From Severe Bruising?
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