Petersen house videos by the National Museum of Civil War Medicine

[Steve]

I came across this wonderful video series by the National Museum of Civil War Medicine about Petersen House and the assassination of Lincoln. A Park Ranger from Ford's Theatre named Garrett Kost gives a wonderfully enthusiastic history of Petersen House and the events of that night.

The first video is about Petersen House:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eCrQwZYj1Uo

The second video is about some of the doctors who treated Lincoln, including a short biography of Dr. Charles Leale:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qnpK58qCAH8

Students of the history of the assassination are going to notice a few minor errors given by Kost but it doesn't really distract from the overall great presentation.

If people are really interested, I guess I can quickly go over the ones I noticed.

However, there is one major error I do feel I have to address, Kost says the Dr. Anderson Abbott, the Black Candadian doctor who enlisted in the Union Army was one of the physicians who attended the dying President. That's not true. While Dr. Anderson Abbott did know the Lincolns through Elizabeth Keckley, he was not one of the doctors at Petersen House. The Dr. Abbott Kost was referring to was Dr. Ezra Walker Abbott who had been in the Family Circle section at Ford's Theatre that night but was unable to reach the box while the other doctors had been treating Lincoln there. Unlike Dr. Anderson Abbott or Dr. Charles Leale who were surgeons in the U.S. Army, Dr. Ezra Abbott was only a contract nurse for the Army.