Laura Keene dress

[RJNorton]

Strange there is no mention of Keene's presence in the 1865 account.

In 2006 I had contact with a New Zealand intensivist who feels Leale did not actually use mouth-to-mouth artificial respiration. This doctor gives three main reasons for his opinion: (1) Leale makes no mention of mouth-to mouth artificial respiration in his 1867 report to Congress. Only in 1909, when Leale gave another account, do we first learn of his claim of artificial respiration and a crude form of closed chest cardiac massage. In 1909 Leale was 67 and trying to recall events from 44 years previous. (2) According to this doctor's study of the history of critical care and resuscitation, mouth-to-mouth artificial respiration was totally out of favor as a resuscitation maneuver in 1865. (3) None of the other people who rushed to Lincoln's aid, including the other doctors who arrived in the state box, independently corroborated Leale's claims.

Back in 1995, Dr. Richard A. R. Fraser, writing in "American Heritage," noted that "Leale’s account of the assassination submitted in 1867 made no mention of resuscitation, but in 1909 he delivered an address in New York giving a detailed description of practicing mouth-to-mouth resuscitation on Lincoln after he probed the wound. It is strange that Leale did not include this in his first account, which omitted no other important details of the President’s treatment. I am more inclined to give credence to this earlier version, recorded in Leale’s own hand the day Lincoln died."

Here is a capsule of the research this doctor sent me:

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"If I can go on to you about M-to-M (because that is what I will be writing about) then the chequered history is:

1. Used by midwives, apparently since antiquity
2. 1732 Re-introduced by Wm Tossach's effective demonstration
3. Mid C18, adopted by Humane Socs, including the late-founded ones in the USA (and endorsed in 1788 by Mass. Humane Soc [HS] and 1791 by Philadelphia HS). Yet
4. 1782. Advised against by [what later became] the Royal HS (London)
5. Condemned, in effect, by French Academy of Sciences, Paris, 1829, after they accepted their commissioned studies findings that all positive pressure ventilation was dangerous
6. 1837 Condemned by the Royal HS also
7. thereafter until "rediscovery" in the 1940s, virtually abandoned and forgotten except among midwives, some obstetricians and some C20 anesthetists.

So we have CAL fitting in between 6 &7. Hence my surprise and wonderment as to however did he come by such an out-of-favour method of resus, being just medically qualified..."

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All of this is not meant to discredit Dr. Leale and his efforts on Abraham Lincoln's behalf. I certainly consider Dr. Leale a hero. However, it seems as least possible that he did not do everything he claimed to do in the 1909 address (according to this New Zealand doctor).