Posts Tagged With: Forensics

An interesting article has been published in The American Journal of Forensic Medicine and Pathology by Drs. Theodore N. Pappas, Sven Swanson, and Michael M. Baden from the Department of Surgery at Duke University School of Medicine. The authors attempted to come to a conclusion about an oddly debated detail of Lincoln’s assassination: the path the bullet took inside Abraham Lincoln’s skull.

In the journal article, the doctors discussed the contradictory evidence that exists regarding the path Booth’s bullet took as it was fired into Lincoln’s brain. This debate is not a new one, as fellow MDs and late Lincoln researchers John K. Lattimer (whose diagram is shown above), Blaine Houmes, and E. Lawrence Abel each wrote about this topic.

What makes this new journal article unique is the way in which Drs. Pappas, Swanson, and Baden, were granted access to the Presidential Box to re-stage the assassination based on eyewitness accounts. They attempted to simulate the circumstances surrounding the assassination to get a better idea of the path the bullet may have taken. I’m happy to see Ford’s Theatre allowing this scientific exploration, even though the process involved a somewhat eerie floating skull over the reproduction Lincoln Rocker.

I won’t spoil the doctors’ findings here. Instead, I encourage you all to read the article for yourself. As far as scientific journal articles go, this one is very easy to digest. Click here or on the following title to read their article on The American Journal of Forensic Medicine and Pathology‘s website:

I’m grateful to these doctors and the ones who came before them for using their expertise to help further our understanding of this key event in American history.