Armstrong – Table of Contents

bodies of the 9th thoracic and first lumbar spinal vertebras due to osteoporosis. This
condition required his wearing a stiff supportive back brace so that he could be
ambulatory. He had a strange history related to his renal system. In 1963, for undisclosed
reasons, he had an exploration of the left kidney area that showed an unusual tissue
formation of the left ureter (the tubular structure from the kidney to the bladder). The
diagnosis was localized amyloidosis. (Amyloid is a starch-like protein-polysaccharide
complex disseminated locally or generally in the body either as a primary, idiopathic
process or secondary to a chronic inflammatory infectious illness such as a draining,
pustular wound.) The condition appeared to be progressive but his physicians never
established whether it was related to any of his previous illnesses.
In 1966, he developed diabetes mellitus and diverticulosis of the colon. That year
he was hospitalized at the U. S. Public Health Service Hospital in Baltimore because of
bowel obstruction. During this hospitalization his physicians found a double right ureter
(congenital anomaly) and Bence-Jones protein in his urine (an abnormal protein often
found in multiple myeloma, leukemia, lymphoma, and Hodgkin’s Disease). Armstrong
was re-hospitalized in 1967 at Baltimore because of symptoms related to worsening
kidney function and the development of the signs of congestive heart failure. His final
hospitalization was in June 1967 at the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda,
Maryland with terminal uremia and uremic pericarditis. He died after two days on June
22, 1967. He was interred next to his wife in the family burial plot in the Senecaville
(Ohio) cemetery among friends and neighbors.
Mary Emma Armstrong described one regret associated with her father’s death.
An autopsy was performed on Dr. Armstrong (in the presence of his longtime friend and