The immediate cause of death was secondary hemorrhage from one of the mesenteric arteries adjoining the track of the ball, the blood rupturing the peritoneum and nearly a pint escaping into the abdominal cavity.  This hemorrhage is believed to have been the cause of the severe pain in the lower part of the chest complained of just before death.  An abscess cavity 6 inches by 4 in dimensions was found in the vicinity of the gall bladder, between the liver and the transverse colon, which were strongly adherent.  It did not involve the substance of the liver, and no communication was found between it and the wound.

A long suppurating channel extended from the external wound, between the loin muscles and the right kidney, almost to the right groin.  This channel, now known to be due to the burrowing of pus from the wound, was supposed during life to have been the track of the ball.

On an examination of the organs of the chest evidences of severe bronchitis were found on both sides, with broncho-pneumonia of the lower portions of the right lung, and, though to a much less extent, of the left.  The lungs contained no abscesses and the heart no clots.  The liver was enlarged and fatty, but not from abscesses.  Nor were any found in any other organ except the left kidney, which contained near its surface a small abscess about one-third of an inch in diameter.

In reviewing the history of the case in connection with the autopsy it is quite evident that the different suppurating surfaces, and especially the fractured, spongy tissue of the vertebrae, furnish a sufficient explanation of the septic condition which existed.

D.W.  BLISS. 
J.K.  BARNES. 
J.J.  WOODWARD. 
ROBERT REYBURN. 
FRANK H. HAMILTON. 
D. HAYES AGNEW. 
ANDREW H. SMITH. 
D.S.  LAMB.

[September 20, 1881.]

FORMAL OATH OF OFFICE ADMINISTERED TO PRESIDENT ARTHUR.

President Chester A. Arthur took the formal oath of office as President of the United States in the room of the Vice-President, in the Capitol, Thursday, September 22, 1881, at 12.10 o’clock p.m.  Chief Justice Morrison R. Waite administered the oath prescribed by the Constitution in the presence of the members of the Cabinet, the Justices of the Supreme Court, ex-Presidents Grant and Hayes, General W.T.  Sherman, and a number of Senators and Representatives.

[For Inaugural Address of President Arthur see pp. 33-34.]

ACTION OF CONGRESS.

President Arthur, in his first annual message to the first session of the Forty-seventh Congress, thus announced the death of his predecessor: