Saving President Lincoln: An Update for Clinicians

摘要

On the evening of April 14, 1865, John Wilkes Booth fired a half-inch lead ball from a single-shot brass derringer pistol into the left side of the head of U.S. President Abraham Lincoln. Dr. Charles A. Leale, a 23-year-old assistant surgeon, U.S. volunteers, reached Lincoln within minutes of 'the shooting and was accosted immediately by a distraught Mrs. Lincoln crying: "Oh physician! Is he dead? Can he recover?" The President was not yet dead. However, after a cursory examination, Leale concluded that "His wound is mortal: it is impossible for him to recover#