Lincoln's embalmment

[Houmes]

(01-08-2015 01:06 PM)LincolnToddFan Wrote:  

(01-08-2015 04:25 AM)Eva Elisabeth Wrote:  Toia, on the same thread I posted above we once discussed the possibility of Lincoln's present day survival in case of instant appropriate medical care. I personally believe he would have had a good chance of survival.

That's right...thanks Roger. In fact I remember reading that article long ago, before I even joined here.

I agree with Kees. Even if AL's life had been saved he would have been intellectually and mentally unrecognizable from the man we have come to know down through history. I think he would have been depressed and unhappy. Being unable to hear or see very well and unable to articulate as brilliantly might have been a fate worse than death for him.

I'm afraid we'll have to agree to disagree. Through the years the various autopsy reports and recollections have been debated regarding the correct bullet path. Most of these reports were written hours or days later. The only primary report made during the autopsy was by Dr. Stone, scribbled on a druggist's prescription pad while the participants were discussing what they saw. Dr. Stone also wrote, later using his original notes, a longer final report. His later report correlates quite well with the report of Dr. Woodward, one of the two pathologists performing Lincoln's autopsy, and both agree that the bullet ended up on the left side. Two caveats are important: the first is that the drawing appearing in Dr. Lattimer's book was meant to be an approximation of two potential bullet paths, and was not drawn to scale--too often people assume the drawing is fact; the other is that Dr. Stone's original notes are much more revealing than his later report. What he didn't write later but included in his first note was the bullet "...entered the left ventricle...followed the course of the ventricle accurately...ploughing thro upper part of thalamus...(ending) just above the corpus striatum of left side." All the other autopsy reports, including the official one, are far less precise. From Stone's record, unless the bullet suddenly veered off course it couldn't have ended up behind the right eye. What it did do was destroy half of President Lincoln's brain. Neuropathologists today call the thalamus "high value real estate." It's in the critical central part of the brain and functions as a relay station for all sensory nerve centers in the brain, except for sense of smell. It's unheard of for a neurosurgeon today to consider repairing a simultaneously ravaged sinus, ventricle, and thalamus. The second Booth pulled the trigger of his deringer, there was no way Lincoln could survive--then or now.