Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Tag: Abraham Lincoln

  • Marfan syndrome and Abraham Lincoln

    Umut Akova Atlanta, Georgia, United States   The earliest presidential portrait of Lincoln. Salt print, 1787. Via Wikimedia. Marfan syndrome is a rare, inherited genetic disorder that affects the body’s connective tissues. People with Marfan syndrome often have distinctive physical features such as tall stature, long limbs, joint hypermobility, and a narrow face. The condition is…

  • Abraham Lincoln’s smallpox

    Howard Fischer Uppsala, Sweden   Abraham Lincoln and his son Tad looking at an album of photographs. Anthony Berger. 1864. Library of Congress. A brutal, bloody civil war had been tearing the United States of America apart for two years when President Abraham Lincoln arrived in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania on November 19, 1863. Four months before…

  • Samuel Mudd, MD: Good Samaritan or conspirator?

    Kevin R. Loughlin Boston, Massachusetts, United States   Figure 1 Samuel A. Mudd, MD. Wikimedia. As he rose in the Washington, D.C. courtroom on June 30, 1865, to hear his verdict, Dr. Samuel Mudd looked older than his thirty-one years (Figure 1). His odobene mustache framed his mouth and his goatee was speckled with prematurely…

  • Blood relics and contemporary memory

    Robbie Porter Worcester, England   Basement room of the Ipatiev House in Ekaterinburg, where the Russian Imperial Family was executed. Investigator Nicholas Sokolov apparently recovered 13 drops of blood from here. Via Wikipedia. Public domain. In the National Maritime Museum at Greenwich there is an exhibit, carefully preserved in an environmentally conditioned case, which is…

  • Hammond, Lincoln, and the emergence of American neurology

    Jack Riggs Morgantown, West Virginia, United States   Surgeon General William A. Hammond. Public domain. All the world’s a stage, And all the men and women merely players. They have their exits and their entrances, and one man in his time plays many parts. – William Shakespeare   Shakespeare’s words describe the extraordinary life of…

  • Letter to Johnny from Clara Barton

    Clara Barton and Col. John J. Elwell Ruth Deming Willow Grove, Pennsylvania, United States   July 15, 1865 (four months to the day after President Lincoln was shot) Dear Johnny, I am tired. Dog tired. At your behest, I am sending this hastily scribbled note. I am sending this to your aunt’s address so your…