Modern medicine and Lincoln

May 21, 2007

Could he have been saved today?

“This could be a recoverable injury, with a reasonable expectation he would survive,” Scalea said.

The assassin’s weapon was relatively impotent compared to the firepower now on the streets.

“He needed surgery, modern-day life support and the appropriate level of intensive care,” he said.

Scalea and others will discuss how the brain injury – a small pistol ball lodged in Lincoln’s skull above and behind his left eye – would be treated today. This in contrast to the primitive methods employed in 1865, where surgeons, lacking X-ray technology, plumbed the injury with a metal probe, and one stuck his finger in the wound.

(via Medpundit)



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