Researchers contemplate Lincoln’s death

Medical researchers, at an annual University of Maryland School of Medicine conference on Friday, brought forward the possibility of American President, Abraham Lincoln surviving the gunshot if today’s medical technology was existent in 1865, and the year of his death.

Doctors and historians at the 13th Historical Clinico-pathological Conference, sponsored by the University of Maryland School of Medicine and the Veterans Affairs hospital examined an extremely hypothetical situation of the possibility of the survival of Lincoln had he been treated by the present era’s shock trauma responders, as reported by the Associated Press.

The University conference, each year, discusses the deaths of pre-historic figures whether the diagnosis at that time was correct and the causes of death of people with incomplete records.

"We probably see a dozen gunshot wounds to the head each year where people survive. He had a non-fatal injury by 2007 standards," said Thomas M. Scalea, a surgeon and the director of the Shock Trauma Center.

According to Thomas Scalea, Lincoln stood a good chance of surviving with the help of present medical treatment, although brain injuries are unpredictable, as after the shot at about 10:25 p.m. on April 14, he survived for around nine hours crossing the basic time duration after which a patient’s body functions stabilize. Blood loss and brain swelling caused his death at 7:22 a.m. in the morning which could have been avoided by the modern and innovative procedures that would have relieved pressure on his damaged brain, and reduced or eliminated secondary damage from hemorrhaging.

"For him to have lived today would not be an extraordinary thing. I don’t believe that the president had a uniformly fatal injury,” “Scalea said explaining how Lincoln would have been treated at his center, the world’s first dedicated trauma center.

He also talked about the impact that Lincoln’s survival would have left on his life. He states that Lincoln may have been able to retain his cognitive abilities like language, emotion and problem solving and even be able to think and communicate, as the bullet had not damaged his brain’s frontal lobes, but there was a possibility for him to be partially blind, unsteady on his feet, numb in certain regions of his body and inarticulate. He would have probably been able to return to office after proper recovery, Scalea added.

U.S. presidential historian Steven Lee Carson also considered the role that Lincoln's secretary of war, Edwin Stanton who made the important decisions after the assassination, would likely to have played if Lincoln had survived. He added that things would have been different and the nation would have had a different face had he survived.

Vice President Andrew Johnson would not have automatically taken charge as the 25th amendment dealing with the transfer of power while a president was incapacitated was not introduced until John F. Kennedy’s assassination.

“The United States certainly would have been a more just nation, particularly in matters of race, and quicker,” Carson said.

President Abraham Lincoln was shot by actor and Confederate sympathizer John Wilkes Booth with a muzzle-loading derringer pistol in the lower rear part of the skull, while attending a performance of Our American Cousin at Ford's Theatre with his wife and two guests on April 14, 1865. Lincoln died the following day in the home of William Petersen, at 7:22 am.

The University has discussed cases of many famous personalities in the past which include Alexander the Great (typhoid fever complicated by Guillain-Barre syndrome), Ludwig van Beethoven (syphilis) and Edgar Allan Poe (rabies, a diagnosis now generally discredited).