BGuthrie Photos: DC -- Natl Museum of Health and Medicine (Walter Reed) -- Exhibit: His Wound is Mortal: The Final Hours of President Abraham Lincoln

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:
1. NMHMLI_110327_004.JPG: Abraham Lincoln: The Final Casualty of the War
2. NMHMLI_110327_006.JPG: Lincoln's Last Hours: "His wound is mortal; it is impossible for him to recover." -- Dr. Charles A. Leale On the evening of April 14, 1865, Confederate sympathizer John Wilkes Booth assassinated President Abraham Lincoln with a Deringer pistol at Ford's Theatre. Army physicians and staff from the Army Medical Museum cared for the president through the night, helping him breathe more regularly and making him more comfortable. Lincoln died at 7:20am the following morning. These iconic artifacts tell the story of Lincoln's final hours, and provide context for the medical, historical, and legal investigation of his death.
3. NMHMLI_110327_013.JPG: "A little black mass no bigger than the end of my finger." -- Dr. Edward Curtis On April 15, 1865 at 12:10pm, the autopsy of President Lincoln took place in the Guest Room at the northeast corner of the second floor of the White House (currently the President's Dining Room), Surgeon General Joseph K Barnes and Dr. Robert Stone presided, while Dr. Joseph Janvier Westwood and Dr. Edward Curtis performed the autopsy.
4. NMHMLI_110327_026.JPG: Surgeon General Joseph K. Barnes
5. NMHMLI_110327_030.JPG: Probe used by Surgeon General Joseph Barnes to locate the bullet. Prior to the discovery of x-rays, physicians had difficulty differentiating between bullet and bone within a wound, so a porcelain-tipped probe was used to explore the wound site. If the probe encountered a lead bullet, a mark would appear on the white tip of the probe. At about 2:00am, Surgeon General Barnes introduced a silver probe into the wound, which met an obstruction at a depth of about three inches. He determined that the obstruction was a plug of bone lodged in the path of the ball. The probe passed by the obstruction but was too short to follow the entire track of the wound. He then introduced this long, Nelaton probe that passed into the track of the wound two inches beyond the plug of bone and struck what he believed was the bullet, passed beyond it, and encountered fragments of the orbital bones of the left eye socket. The bullet did not make a mark on the top of the probe. (The probe is missing its porcelain tip.)
6. NMHMLI_110327_038.JPG: Sketch of Abraham Lincoln's death-bed scene. Hermann Faber, Army Medical Museum illustrator April 15, 1865. Immediately after the removal of Lincoln's body, Hermann Faber, a medical artist on duty at the Army Medical Museum, entered the room where the president had died and made a sketch, which he showed to Dr. Woodward who provided details of the position of those present at the time of Lincoln's demise. Drs. Woodward and Barnes approved the accuracy of the sketch.
7. NMHMLI_110327_045.JPG: Persons around Lincoln identified: (1) Gideon Welles, Secretary of the Navy (2) Salmon P. Chase, Secretary of the Treasury (3) Dr. Robert King Stone, Lincoln's personal physician (4) Charles Sumner, U.S. Senator (5) Dr. Charles H. Crane, Asst. Surgeon General (6) Dr. Joseph K. Barnes, Surgeon General (7) Henry W. Halleck, Maj. Gen. (8) Edwin McMasters Stanton, Sec. of War
8. NMHMLI_110327_055.JPG: Cuff of Dr. Edward Curtis's sleeve, stained with Lincoln's blood. Envelope that contained the bloodstained cuff. When Dr. Curtis returned home from the autopsy and was changing his clothes, he found a few drops of Lincoln's blood had stained the cuffs of his shirt. His wife cut the cuffs from the shirt and sealed them in this envelope. Dr. Curtis endorsed the envelope with the following: Shirt sleeve soiled with the blood of President Abraham Lincoln at the autopsy on his body April 15, 1865 Edward Curtis, Asst. Surg. USA
9. NMHMLI_110327_064.JPG: The bullet that took the president's life: This hand-made ball of lead, fired from a Philadelphia Derringer pistol, was removed from Lincoln's brain during the autopsy,.
10. NMHMLI_110327_072.JPG: Bone fragments from Lincoln's skull: After the autopsy, as Dr. Curtis was cleaning his instruments, he found on one of them a tiny splinter of bone from Lincoln's skull, which had been driven into the brain by the bullet and had adhered to the surgical instrument.
11. NMHMLI_110327_083.JPG: Locks of hair removed from Lincoln's head wound: A small amount of hair from the area surrounding Lincoln's wound was removed by Dr. C.H. Liebermann, one of the surgeons in attendance at Lincoln's bedside, and given by him to Surgeon General Joseph K. Barnes. Dr. Stone, who was present at the autopsy, presented a lock of hair to Mrs. Lincoln at her request, and to each of the surgeons present at the autopsy.
12. NMHMLI_110327_090.JPG: To mark the 200th anniversary of President Abraham Lincoln's birth, the National Museum of Health and Medicine/AFIP honors our 16th president with this exhibition of items associated with his last hours and the physicians who cared for him. In April 1862, Lincoln appointed William A. Hammond as Surgeon General of the US Army. Hammond then founded the Army Medical Museum (now the National Museum of Health and Medicine) to document the effects of war wounds and disease on the human body. Today, the Museum is the nation's repository of historical and medically-significant specimens and artifacts documenting the history of American medicine, with a special emphasis on military medicine. Abraham Lincoln: The Final Casualty of the War is endorsed by the Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Commission as part of their year-long national celebration of the president's life and legacy.
13. NMHMLI_110327_092.JPG: Casts of Abraham Lincolns' face and hands: Leonard Wells Volk, 1860 Reproductions from original casts by Avard Fairbanks, 1942 Leonard Wells Volk, a well-known sculptor in mid-19th century America, made these casts for his own use in creating other likenesses of Lincoln such as busts and cameos. In a collection of essays titled "Lincoln for the Ages" (Doubleday, 1960), sculptor Avard Fairbanks wrote: "Virtually every sculptor and artist uses the Volk mask for Lincoln. I have committed its lines to memory. It is the most reliable document of the Lincoln face, and far more valuable than photographs, for it is actual form. All the world is indebted to Leonard Volk for his contribution."
14. NMHMLI_110327_103.JPG: Volk first met Lincoln in 1858, during the Lincoln-Douglas series of debates, and invited him to sit for a sculpture. Lincoln began the process by visiting Volk's Chicago, Illinois studio on March 31, 1860, to sit for a life mask impression. From this, Volk sculpted a bust, which he delivered to the Lincoln home in Springfield, Illinois on May 18. During the visit, he made arrangements to come back to take plaster impressions of Lincoln's hands on May 20, the Sunday after the official announcement of his presidential nomination the evening before. Volk needed Lincoln to grasp something in his hands in order to make the casts. Lincoln went to his woodshed, sawed off a broom handle, and returned to his dining room where the impressions would be made. Compared to his left hand, Lincoln's right hand was swollen and puffy from excessive handshaking the prior evening. The difference is evident in the casts.
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Directly Related Pages: Other pages with content (DC -- Natl Museum of Health and Medicine (Walter Reed) -- Exhibit: His Wound is Mortal: The Final Hours of President Abraham Lincoln) directly related to this one: [Display ALL photos on one page]:
- 2009_DC_NMHMDC_Lincoln: DC -- Natl Museum of Health and Medicine (Walter Reed) -- Exhibit: His Wound is Mortal: The Final Hours of President Abraham Lincoln (15 photos from 2009)
- 2008_DC_NMHMDC_Lincoln: DC -- Natl Museum of Health and Medicine (Walter Reed) -- Exhibit: His Wound is Mortal: The Final Hours of President Abraham Lincoln (1 photo from 2008)
- 2007_DC_NMHMDC_Lincoln: DC -- Natl Museum of Health and Medicine (Walter Reed) -- Exhibit: His Wound is Mortal: The Final Hours of President Abraham Lincoln (2 photos from 2007)
- 2005_DC_NMHMDC_Lincoln: DC -- Natl Museum of Health and Medicine (Walter Reed) -- Exhibit: His Wound is Mortal: The Final Hours of President Abraham Lincoln (6 photos from 2005)
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Same Subject: Click on this link to see coverage of items having the same subject: [Military (Non-Events)] [Museums (History)] [Museums (Other)] [National Museum of Health and Medicine (NMHM)] [Display ALL National Museum of Health and Medicine (NMHM) photos]
2011 photos: Trips this year: Civil War Trust conferences (Savannah, GA, Chattanooga, TN), New Jersey over Memorial Day for my birthday (people never seem to visit New Jersey -- it's always just a pit stop on the way to New York. I thought I might as well spend a few days there. Despite some nice places, it still ended up a pit stop for me -- New York City was infinitely more interesting), my 6th consecutive San Diego Comic-Con trip (including Las Vegas, Los Angeles, and San Francisco). Ego strokes: Author photos that I took were used on two book jackets this year: Jason Emerson's book "The Dark Days of Abraham Lincoln's Widow As Revealed by Her Own Letters" and Dennis L. Noble's "The U.S. Coast Guard's War on Human Smuggling." I also had a photo of Jason Stelter published in the Washington Examiner and a picture of Miss DC, Ashley Boalch, published in the Washington Post. Equipment this year: I mostly used the Fuji S100fs camera as well as two Nikon models -- the D90 and the new D7000. Mostly a toy, I also purchased a Fuji Real 3-D W3 camera, to try out 3-D photographs. I found it interesting although I don't see any real use for 3-D stills now. Given that many of the photos from the 1860s were in 3-D (including some of the more famous Civil War shots), it's odd to see it coming back. Number of photos taken this year: just over 390,000.
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