Robert Arnold's Book The Conspiracy Between John Wilkes Booth and the Union Army

[mikegriffith1]

Regarding the type of bullet that killed the man in the barn, Dr. Arnold covers this, and I've quoted him on it, but I'll go to Dr. Barnes' first description of the bullet type, quoted in the January-February 1993 edition of Navy Medicine, to show that Dr. Barnes did in fact describe the bullet as a rifle bullet, also known as a "carbine bullet":

Quote:Barnes referred to a "gunshot wound." The Catalogue of the Surgical Section of the United States Army Medical Museum, published under his direction in 1866, describes the wound as caused by:

a conoidal carbine bullet [that] entered the right side, comminuting the base of the right lamina of the fourth vertebra, fracturing it longitudinally and separating it from the spinous process, at the same time fracturing the fifth through its pedicle and involving that transverse process. The missile passed directly through the canal with a right inclination downward and to the rear, emerging through the left bases of the fourth and fifth laminae, which are comminuted, and from which fragments were embedded in the muscles of the neck. The bullet in its course avoided the large cervical vessels. (Guttridge, "Identification and Autopsy of John Wilkes Booth," Navy Medicine, January-February 1993, p. 23, quoting The Catalogue of the Surgical Section of the United States Army Medical Museum, 1866, p. 58, emphasis added)

But, nine years later, in 1875, in The Medical and Surgical History of the War of the Rebellion, Barnes described the bullet as "a conoidal pistol ball." Furthermore, the original card attached to the specimen said the bullet was a carbine bullet, "but it was later changed to pistol ball there as well" (Arnold, p. 265).

Dr. Arnold on why the damage to the spine must have been done by a rifle bullet:

Quote:The picture of the specimen clearly demonstrates that the spinous processes of the vertebrae were completely blown away, the effects of a high-energy missile such as a rifle bullet, not a medium-energy missile such as a pistol ball.

High-energy missiles that traverse the spinal canal are especially damaging. The pulverized bone is blasted into the spinal canal, and a temporary cavity is caused by the secondary bone and neural tissue missiles, which may be as much as 25 times the frontal area of the bullet. The permanent track was at the C4-C5 (cervical vertebrae) level, and the temporary cavity would likely be about six inches in each direction. The proximal damage would have been to the nerve roots to the phrenic nerves, which supply the diaphragm. (p. 265)

So, Dr. Barnes' first description of the type of bullet agrees with Dr. Arnold's forensic and ballistics analysis of the kind of bullet that struck the man in the barn. Corbett could not have fired that bullet. Someone else shot the man, but Conger, Baker, and Doherty deemed it necessary to falsely claim that Corbett shot him.

Finally, I would just mention again that Dr. Arnold was not just any Navy surgeon. He was recognized highly enough by his peers and superiors in the Navy to be selected to train other Navy surgeons and was selected for advanced training at Bethesda Naval Hospital. In addition, he was selected for duty on a Fleet Surgical Team and became the commanding officer of Fleet Surgical Team 4. After he left the Navy (as a captain), he became an assistant coroner.