DC -- Natl Museum of Health and Medicine (Walter Reed) -- Exhibit: His Wound is Mortal: The Final Hours of President Abraham Lincoln:
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- Specific picture descriptions: Photos above with "i" icons next to the bracketed sequence numbers (e.g. "[1] ") are described as follows:
- NMHMLI_970807_01.JPG: Walter Reed Army Medical Center; Lincoln Display
The Water Reed Army Medical Center was established in 1909 as the Army's top medical facility. Here, Congressmen, Senators, Supreme Court judges, US Presidents, and military folk come for treatment. It is here that Dwight Eisenhower died on May 28 1969. General John Pershing died here in 1948.
Alexander ("Boss") Sherherd's summer estate ("Bleak House") used to be on this land but it was torn down in 1916 to make additions to the medical complex.
For tourists, the main spot here is the National Museum of Health and Medicine. This is a famous "gross-out" museum which used to be housed downtown at Ford's Theatre and at the site of the Hirshhorn Museum. In 1862, the Army decided to collect specimens for the study of battlefield pathology. As a result, there are limbs and photos of bullet wounds and items on reconstructing things like shattered jaws during the war. (Of course, medicine wasn't much back then so you had a good chance of dying from disease during the operation and the results themselves weren't all that pretty.)
The most famous piece here is a piece of bone from Daniel Sickles' leg. He had gotten hit by a cannonball during the battle at Gettysburg in July 1863 and sent the amputated leg as well as the cannonball to the museum. After the war, he began paying an annual visit to the lost leg on the anniversary of its departure.
The museum also had the pathological evidence from the Lincoln and Garfield assassinations. This is what the photo here shows. To give you a schematic:
+-----------------------------------------------------+ | Drawing1 Quote | | Life_Mask Drawing2 | | | | Cuffs Container1 Probe Hands Shape1 Bowl | | Cuffs Container2&3 Shape2 Shape3 | +-----------------------------------------------------+
The life mask and the hands were plaster molds taken in 1860 for a sculpture. These are probably copies as may be the ones at the museum at Ford's Theatre.
The cuffs are the bloodied (and now fading) cuffs of the surgeon who attended Lincoln.
Container 1 contains a swath of Lincoln's hair.
The probe was stuck into the bullet wound to find out how deep the bullet was. It turned out to be in there 6 inches which precluded any type of surgery.
Shapes 1 and 3 were taken from the body of John Wilkes Booth, the assassin. Both are pieces of his vertebrae (the top one is labeled "spinal cord", the bottom is "vertebrae") and both have a rod through them showing the path of the bullet.
The plate is a gift from Secretary of State William Seward, who was attacked the same night as Lincoln. It was presented to the Surgeon General after treatment.
Containers 2 and 3 contain little pieces of Lincoln's skull from near the wound.
Shape 2 is the actual bullet removed from Lincoln's skull.
- NMHMLI_970904_01.JPG: Walter Reed Army Medical Center; Lincoln Items
Here's a close-up of some of the Lincoln-assassination-related items at the Medical Center. The two shapes on the left are the blood-stained sleeves of the doctor who treated Lincoln after his shooting. The item in the upper middle is a lock of Lincoln's hair. Below it are pieces of his skull retrieved during the examination of his head wound. To the upper right is the probe that was used to examine the wound. Below it is the bullet which lodged in his brain.
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