Identification of Booth's body

[STS Lincolnite]

I am waaaay behind on my reading here, but I had a few minutes over a late lunch and took some time to read the most recent posts in this thread. Seems there will be lots to unpack when I get a chance to go back through the full thread - which I hope to have some time to do in a more thorough way at some point. But, that being said, I think I have already gained a good sense of what lies within. Even in what little I have read there are a number of things (particularly related to the body’s response to injury) that have spawned some inaccurate speculation. I don’t have time to address all of those items now, but, in the little time I do have, I did want quickly address one of the things that immediately stood out to me.

mikegriffith1 stated in a post above:
“A scar from a burn? Could this be one of the reasons that Lt. Baker took off with the body and kept it for some three hours—to burn a scar onto the back of the neck?”

I’m sorry to break it to you Mr. Griffith, but that is just not how scars work from a physiological standpoint.

A scar is essentially an area where tissue (of a more cross-linked, haphazard, fibrotic nature than normal tissue) develops in the area of an incompletely or ineffectively healed wound, burn, lesion, etc. The key here is that a scar is RESULTANT from, and a part of, an active healing process.

While one could burn the tissue, a dead body can’t form a scar of any type because there would and could not be an active healing process. It’s simply impossible.

I am in a bit of a salty mood today, so I think I will continue on a bit more (from atop my soapbox ). As I think about what I have read in this thread so far, I am reminded that no matter how hard we try we can't with absolute certainty know everything about the past. And also that questions in the practice of history are of great importance. But not all questions are created equal and not all questions need to be asked. The questions I quoted above are reminiscent of those often put forward by Otto Eisenschiml. While I think they are posed in good faith, their speculative nature, are in the end, damaging to the practice of history. They end up taking on a life all their own, when a little simple, balanced investigation might render the question itself unnecessary and thereby prevent or at least minimize speculation based inaccuracies and their inevitable propagation. And don’t even get me started on giving an answer to a question and attaching some great value to saying “it’s possible.” In the case above, the answer speculated upon in the question is not even possible. And in cases where something may in fact be possible, doesn’t mean it’s probable. It’s possible that a satellite might fall out of the atmosphere and strike me on the head in the next 30 seconds, but it’s certainly not probable.