Journal of the American College of Surgeons
-
Biography Historical Article
Good Samaritan surgeon wrongly accused of contributing to President Lincoln's death: an experimental study of the President's fatal wound.
When President Abraham Lincoln was shot in the back of the head at Ford's Theater in Washington, D.C., on April 14, 1865, he was immediately rendered unconscious and apneic. Doctor Charles A. Leale, an Army surgeon, who had special training in the care of brain injuries, rushed to Lincoln's assistance. When Doctor Leale probed the wound in Lincoln's thickened scalp, feeling for the bullet, he dislodged a blood clot, and Lincoln began to breathe again. However, Lincoln progressively deteriorated and died at 7:22 AM on April 15, 1865. During the postmortem examination of Lincoln's body, numerous secondary missiles of bone and metal were found in the track of pultaceous brain tissue, extending completely through the brain to the front of the skull. In February 1995, an article in a popular magazine alleged that Doctor Leale had caused further (fatal) damage to Lincoln's brain by thrusting his finger into the brain through the bullet hole. The article alleged (wrongly) that most bullet wounds of the brain incurred in Civil War times were not fatal. ⋯ The wound made by John Wilkes Booth's derringer ball in Lincoln's brain was devastating; it was clearly the cause of his death. Good Samaritan surgeon Leale has been falsely accused of contributing to Lincoln's death.