Charles S. Taft

[STS Lincolnite]

Kees,

I think that you have a great premise for a talk. And I, along with others who have posted, would be interested to hear how it goes.

I will, however, share with you a fact that I came across tonight while reading up on the various accounts of Lincoln's assassination after I read through the "Rubber box" thread.

Leale did not mention anything akin to resuscitation procedures in either his 1865 or 1867 accounts. It was not until his lecture in 1909 that he recorded/mentioned performing these chest compressions. I originally read about this discrepancy online but can't remember what the site was (I will see if I can find again). I did however confirm when chest compressions were first used. According to the website of the American Heart Association: 1891 - Dr. Friedrich Maass performed the first equivocally documented chest compression in humans.

http://www.heart.org/HEARTORG/CPRAndECC/...rticle.jsp

Although it is not impossible that someone did chest compressions prior to 1891, I find it hard to believe that Dr. Leale would perform chest compressions (described in such detail and consistency with what would be later performed) a full 25 years before the first documented application of the procedure.

I think that 40+ years after the event Dr. Leale's memory failed him a little (or maybe he embellished) and recounted a treatment intervention that he did not actually perform (and apparently would not be invented/performed for about 25 more years).

[LincolnToddFan]

Thanks Scott,

As much as I admire and respect Dr. Leale for his devotion and care for President Lincoln on Apr 14-15 1865, I've always thought the exact same thing about his account of "chest compressions" in the Presidential Box at Ford's that fateful night.

[RJNorton]

I posted this in another thread last year but will post again here.

I have 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:

***********************************************

"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 anaesthetists.

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..."

***************************************

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 (according to this New Zealand doctor).

[loetar44]

(09-14-2014 08:26 PM)STS Lincolnite Wrote:  Kees,

I think that you have a great premise for a talk. And I, along with others who have posted, would be interested to hear how it goes.

I will, however, share with you a fact that I came across tonight while reading up on the various accounts of Lincoln's assassination after I read through the "Rubber box" thread.

Leale did not mention anything akin to resuscitation procedures in either his 1865 or 1867 accounts. It was not until his lecture in 1909 that he recorded/mentioned performing these chest compressions. I originally read about this discrepancy online but can't remember what the site was (I will see if I can find again). I did however confirm when chest compressions were first used. According to the website of the American Heart Association: 1891 - Dr. Friedrich Maass performed the first equivocally documented chest compression in humans.

http://www.heart.org/HEARTORG/CPRAndECC/...rticle.jsp

Although it is not impossible that someone did chest compressions prior to 1891, I find it hard to believe that Dr. Leale would perform chest compressions (described in such detail and consistency with what would be later performed) a full 25 years before the first documented application of the procedure.

I think that 40+ years after the event Dr. Leale's memory failed him a little (or maybe he embellished) and recounted a treatment intervention that he did not actually perform (and apparently would not be invented/performed for about 25 more years).

Thank you so much for the link and the additional information. Very much appreciated.