Charles Dickens, Edwin Stanton, and the Assassination

[Linda Anderson]

(03-04-2015 10:26 PM)Houmes Wrote:  Stanton and Sumner gave their accounts of Lincoln's assassination. Stanton "alluded to Mr. Lincoln's breathing [on his deathbed], and said that it sounded like an aeolian harp, now rising, now falling and almost dying away, and then reviving, and reminded him in what he had noticed in the case of one of his children, who had died in his arms shortly before."

http://rogerjnorton.com/LincolnDiscussio...ht=aeolian

Mr. Lincoln's breathing while on his deathbed is a classic example of Cheyne-Stokes respiration, with rhythmic crescendo (increasing sound or force of breathing sounds) then decrescendo (with decrease in sound or force), usually followed by a pause where the patient stops breathing before the pattern is repeated. The respiratory pattern is caused by not enough oxygen to the brain, in this case not because of lack of blood but due to the swelling of Mr. Lincoln's brain, as his brainstem (where the body's control center for breathing is located) was herniating, being pushed down out of the skull into the spinal canal. The president didn't die from bleeding, he died from brain swelling and herniation.
[/quote]

Thanks, Blaine. Stanton remembering his child's recent death would have been another reason for his impatience (to say the least) with Mrs. Lincoln that evening.

---