doctors at lincoln's bedside

[RJNorton]

In a footnote on p. 203 of his We Saw Lincoln Shot: One Hundred Eyewitness Accounts Tim Good writes, "Dr. Gatch's claim appears to be one of the easiest to refute. Both Dr. Leale's and Dr. Taft's accounts mention besides each other only Dr. King. Neither of their accounts, which were recorded within a few years of the assassination, mentions the presence of a a fourth surgeon."

In Dr. Leale's 1909 address he said, "While I was kneeling over the President on the floor Dr. Charles S. Taft and Dr. Albert F. A. King had come and offered to render any assistance. I expressed the desire to have the President taken, as soon as he had gained sufficient strength, to the nearest house on the opposite side of the street. I was asked by several if he could not be taken to the White House, but I responded that if that were attempted the President would die long before we reached there."

Leale does not mention any other doctors in the box.

In his article titled Lincoln's Doctors Fred Hatch does include Dr. Gatch as being in the box along with Leale, Taft, and King.

Reck does not specifically mention Gatch going into the box. According to him the next person to enter the box after the three doctors was William Kent, a government employee. Reck pretty much has King and Kent entering at the same time.

Oliver C. Gatch, who was sitting with his brother, gave this erroneous account in 1909:

"In less than a minute after the shot was fired some one called to me to bring a doctor. I answered that my brother was a surgeon, and a man literally dragged us into the box where the wounded President sat, unconscious, his head fallen on his breast. On entering, we found Miss Harris and Major Rathbone opening Lincoln's collar and examining his breast in an effort to locate the wound. My brother introduced himself as a physician and made haste to find the wound. He raised the President's head to a more erect position, and in so doing his index finger on the left hand came in contact with a jagged hole in the back of Mr. Lincoln's head near the left ear, from which the brain was oozing. Turning to Major Rathbone, my brother said, 'Here is the wound and it is fatal.'

While my brother and I laid the President on the floor and held a handkerchief over the wound, Major Rathbone sent a messenger for Surgeon-General Barnes. No one seemed to know just what to do. Major Rathbone was suffering from his wound and nearly prostrated by the awful calamity. Miss Keene, who had hastened to the box, was with Miss Harris occupied in ministering to poor, distracted Mrs. Lincoln.

It seemed, for a few moments, as if we were all paralyzed. Then my brother broke the silence in our little group around the dying President, so sharply contrasted with the tumult all about us, by calling Major Rathbone's attention to the fact that while Mr. Lincoln was in a critical condition to be moved, he ought, if possible, to be got to a private house, or some more fitting place, for the end that was so imminent. Accordingly, we two — my brother and I — with the aid of a couple of others, raised the President from the floor and carried him through the passage-way, down the stairs, and out of the theater. There was silence as we passed. No one spoke. As we moved slowly across the street, the only sound that was heard above the sobbing of the people was the hoof-beats of cavalry already approaching to guard the street."