Charles S. Taft

[STS Lincolnite]

Kees,

I think that you have a great premise for a talk. And I, along with others who have posted, would be interested to hear how it goes.

I will, however, share with you a fact that I came across tonight while reading up on the various accounts of Lincoln's assassination after I read through the "Rubber box" thread.

Leale did not mention anything akin to resuscitation procedures in either his 1865 or 1867 accounts. It was not until his lecture in 1909 that he recorded/mentioned performing these chest compressions. I originally read about this discrepancy online but can't remember what the site was (I will see if I can find again). I did however confirm when chest compressions were first used. According to the website of the American Heart Association: 1891 - Dr. Friedrich Maass performed the first equivocally documented chest compression in humans.

http://www.heart.org/HEARTORG/CPRAndECC/...rticle.jsp

Although it is not impossible that someone did chest compressions prior to 1891, I find it hard to believe that Dr. Leale would perform chest compressions (described in such detail and consistency with what would be later performed) a full 25 years before the first documented application of the procedure.

I think that 40+ years after the event Dr. Leale's memory failed him a little (or maybe he embellished) and recounted a treatment intervention that he did not actually perform (and apparently would not be invented/performed for about 25 more years).