From the Richmond Daily Whig, 5 April 1864

DEDIGITATION – As the train on the York River railroad was passing in the neighborhood of the City Gas Works, on Sunday evening, a soldier, believed to be a patient from Chimborazo hospital, ran ahead of it and putting his left hand on the track allowed the wheels of the engine to pass over it. All four fingers of the hand were cut off. His conduct can only be accounted for by the presumption that he was laboring under an excessive desire to leave the army.

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