![[LINCOLN, Abraham, ASSASSINATION]. STONE, Robert King, Lincoln family physician. Autograph manuscript (unsigned), a first-hand account of Lincoln's medical condition, death, and autopsy [Washington, D.C., 14-15 April 1865], apparently draft notes for Stone's lecture on 3 May 1865 to the Medical Society of the District of Columbia.](https://www.christies.com/img/LotImages/2005/NYR/2005_NYR_01685_0107_000(110642).jpg?w=1)
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[LINCOLN, Abraham, ASSASSINATION]. STONE, Robert King, Lincoln family physician. Autograph manuscript (unsigned), a first-hand account of Lincoln's medical condition, death, and autopsy [Washington, D.C., 14-15 April 1865], apparently draft notes for Stone's lecture on 3 May 1865 to the Medical Society of the District of Columbia.
6 2/3 pages, 4to, written on rectos and one verso of six sheets lined paper (stationer's mark "Bath" on one), spotting, affecting three leaves, obsuring a few words on page 1, one verso docketed "Dr R.K. Stone concerning Mr. Lincoln's death." Buckram protective folder with typed transcript and related documentation.
"DEATH CLOSED THE SCENE. HE SLEPT.": THE LINCOLN FAMILY PHYSICIAN DESCRIBES THE PRESIDENT'S FINAL HOURS, HIS DECLINE, DEATH AND AUTOPSY
By midnight on the night of Lincoln's assassination, the small room on Tenth Street across from Ford's Theatre was crowded with cabinet members, civil and military authorities and at least six doctors. These included Surgeon General of the Army Joseph K. Barnes, Doctors Charles Sabin Taft and Charles A. Leale (both of whom had been in the audience at Ford's Theatre) and Dr. Africanus F.A. King (a young English obstetrician). Dr. Stone was summoned immediately by carriage, and on his arrival became the chief attending physician. Here, writing only a few weeks after the momentous and tragic events, Stone relates--in careful but at times harrowing medical detail--the last hours of President Abraham Lincoln. These detailed notes by Lincoln's personal physician--apparently unpublished in their entirety--are believed to constitute notes for a lecture given by Stone a few short weeks after the assassination to the Medical Society of the District of Columbia (the lecture was never published, though cited in Milton H. Shutes, Lincoln and the Doctors, p.142).
"On the evening of Friday, April 14, I was summoned in haste to the late President of the United States, to whom I had the honor to be family physician. I was called...a quarter past ten o'clock p.m....The president had been carried to the residence of Mr. Peterson, who resided on Tenth Street...The president had been conveyed to a small room in the back...The president was laid upon the occupant's bed and so great was his stature that his body had to be placed obliquely across it..." Stone found a large number of "sympathizing fellow citizens" and physicians already present: "Assistant Surgeon Taft supporting the sufferer's head, Dr. Leale also of the Army...my old friend Dr. Lieberman, Dr. King, with Dr. Ford, surgeon of the old Capitol Prison...."
"As soon as I was recognized by my friends," Stone continues, "the case was surrendered to my care and I proceeded to exploration of the wound. The president then lay, perfectly passive on his back as if quietly asleep...though at times his respiration was somewhat stertorious. Examination showed that he had rec'd. a gun shot wound on the posterior aspect of the head-not far from the median line & about three inches from the left auditory [ear]...It was remarked that the president's left eye was blackened, the periphery or orbital surface was ecchymised..." Stone "expressed the opinion that it was the result of the direct violence of the ball...the pupil of the right eye was very much dilated and immobile. The left pupil was unchanged...."
In dispassionate forensic terms, Stone details the alarming changes in Lincoln's physiology. "I noticed the appearance of a black or purple spot at the internal angle of the right eye. This, occupying the position of the...ophthalmic sinus, gradually increasing in size, until the right eye was surrounded by a zone of the most intense ecchymosis..." Stone recounts "when I first reached the unfortunate president, he was breathing quietly and calmly and I had hopes he had received a less fatal injury...On examining the wound, it was found that the orifice was plugged by coagula and debris of brain tissue. On cleaning this away, the wound bled steadily though not severely...and instantly almost the stertor was removed and respiration became instantly as sweet and regular as an infant...The wound in general," Stone observes, "gave the appearance of having been produced by a larger ball than that used in an ordinary revolver or pistol...."
"With a small silver probe, I attempted to follow the ball & recognized the presence of a rough foreign body, whether bone or fragment of ball, it was impossible to determine. Some inches further on, a larger body of the same character was touched and passed, and the probe passed its full length....A longer...or Nelaton probe was procured by my friend Dr. Taft & with this I proceeded to re-explore the track of the wound...." Stone continues to probe unsuccessfully for the bullet, an invasive procedure that some later commentators have suggested may have hastened Lincoln's death.
Mustard poultices were applied to Lincoln's "abdomen and extremities"; and "bottles and jugs of hot water were placed near him and his extremities, to regulate the temperature. Of course, all aid was useless in a wound of this character...." He describes Lincoln's increasingly labored respiration and irregular heartbeat, incorporating periodic notes "taken by Dr. King at the president's bedside during the progress of the case." These observations, probably themselves transcribed by Stone from no-longer-extant notes made at Lincoln's deathbed, record the president's gradual but steady decline and death. At 12:40 Stone notes "R. eye much trefused ecchymosis very marked"; at 1:45 a.m. he notes "Very quiet. Resp. irregular." Then, at 6:30 a.m. he writes "Still failing and labored breathing...the least touch of his body surface would cause and electric jerk through body"; at 7 a.m. he notes "Pulse and respiration failing much," and finally, at 7:22 a.m. he writes simply "Death closed the scene. He slept."
The next page and a half contain explicit medical observations on loss of brain tissue due to the wound. Stone then provides (pages 5 and 6) a narrative of "the autopsy of our late President." Present for this post mortem were Surgeon General Barnes, Dr. Crane, and Dr. Taft; Stone was informed by Dr. Brown, the embalmer, that "the embalmment of the body...would immediately follow our necropsy..." Much additional medical detail, follows, including very precise descriptions of the wound, and the exact course of the fatal projectile fired by Booth: "the ball pierced the durameter and through posterior lobe of the Left hemisphere of the brain...it entered the left lateral ventricle...inclining upwards and inward...and lodged just above the Corpus straetum of the left side...." The notes for Stone's lecture seem incomplete at the end, and it is possible the manuscript represents a draft text or rough outline for the lecture.
[With:] STONE. Autograph manuscript description and carefully drawn coat-of arms of Stone, dated 1866. 1 page, 12mo.
Provenance: Dr. Max Thorek, small ownership stamp verso of p.6 (sale, Sotheby Parke Bernet, 15 November 1960, lot 334) -- Philip D. Sang (sale, Sotheby Parke Bernet, 26 April 1978, lot 198).
6 2/3 pages, 4to, written on rectos and one verso of six sheets lined paper (stationer's mark "Bath" on one), spotting, affecting three leaves, obsuring a few words on page 1, one verso docketed "Dr R.K. Stone concerning Mr. Lincoln's death." Buckram protective folder with typed transcript and related documentation.
"DEATH CLOSED THE SCENE. HE SLEPT.": THE LINCOLN FAMILY PHYSICIAN DESCRIBES THE PRESIDENT'S FINAL HOURS, HIS DECLINE, DEATH AND AUTOPSY
By midnight on the night of Lincoln's assassination, the small room on Tenth Street across from Ford's Theatre was crowded with cabinet members, civil and military authorities and at least six doctors. These included Surgeon General of the Army Joseph K. Barnes, Doctors Charles Sabin Taft and Charles A. Leale (both of whom had been in the audience at Ford's Theatre) and Dr. Africanus F.A. King (a young English obstetrician). Dr. Stone was summoned immediately by carriage, and on his arrival became the chief attending physician. Here, writing only a few weeks after the momentous and tragic events, Stone relates--in careful but at times harrowing medical detail--the last hours of President Abraham Lincoln. These detailed notes by Lincoln's personal physician--apparently unpublished in their entirety--are believed to constitute notes for a lecture given by Stone a few short weeks after the assassination to the Medical Society of the District of Columbia (the lecture was never published, though cited in Milton H. Shutes, Lincoln and the Doctors, p.142).
"On the evening of Friday, April 14, I was summoned in haste to the late President of the United States, to whom I had the honor to be family physician. I was called...a quarter past ten o'clock p.m....The president had been carried to the residence of Mr. Peterson, who resided on Tenth Street...The president had been conveyed to a small room in the back...The president was laid upon the occupant's bed and so great was his stature that his body had to be placed obliquely across it..." Stone found a large number of "sympathizing fellow citizens" and physicians already present: "Assistant Surgeon Taft supporting the sufferer's head, Dr. Leale also of the Army...my old friend Dr. Lieberman, Dr. King, with Dr. Ford, surgeon of the old Capitol Prison...."
"As soon as I was recognized by my friends," Stone continues, "the case was surrendered to my care and I proceeded to exploration of the wound. The president then lay, perfectly passive on his back as if quietly asleep...though at times his respiration was somewhat stertorious. Examination showed that he had rec'd. a gun shot wound on the posterior aspect of the head-not far from the median line & about three inches from the left auditory [ear]...It was remarked that the president's left eye was blackened, the periphery or orbital surface was ecchymised..." Stone "expressed the opinion that it was the result of the direct violence of the ball...the pupil of the right eye was very much dilated and immobile. The left pupil was unchanged...."
In dispassionate forensic terms, Stone details the alarming changes in Lincoln's physiology. "I noticed the appearance of a black or purple spot at the internal angle of the right eye. This, occupying the position of the...ophthalmic sinus, gradually increasing in size, until the right eye was surrounded by a zone of the most intense ecchymosis..." Stone recounts "when I first reached the unfortunate president, he was breathing quietly and calmly and I had hopes he had received a less fatal injury...On examining the wound, it was found that the orifice was plugged by coagula and debris of brain tissue. On cleaning this away, the wound bled steadily though not severely...and instantly almost the stertor was removed and respiration became instantly as sweet and regular as an infant...The wound in general," Stone observes, "gave the appearance of having been produced by a larger ball than that used in an ordinary revolver or pistol...."
"With a small silver probe, I attempted to follow the ball & recognized the presence of a rough foreign body, whether bone or fragment of ball, it was impossible to determine. Some inches further on, a larger body of the same character was touched and passed, and the probe passed its full length....A longer...or Nelaton probe was procured by my friend Dr. Taft & with this I proceeded to re-explore the track of the wound...." Stone continues to probe unsuccessfully for the bullet, an invasive procedure that some later commentators have suggested may have hastened Lincoln's death.
Mustard poultices were applied to Lincoln's "abdomen and extremities"; and "bottles and jugs of hot water were placed near him and his extremities, to regulate the temperature. Of course, all aid was useless in a wound of this character...." He describes Lincoln's increasingly labored respiration and irregular heartbeat, incorporating periodic notes "taken by Dr. King at the president's bedside during the progress of the case." These observations, probably themselves transcribed by Stone from no-longer-extant notes made at Lincoln's deathbed, record the president's gradual but steady decline and death. At 12:40 Stone notes "R. eye much trefused ecchymosis very marked"; at 1:45 a.m. he notes "Very quiet. Resp. irregular." Then, at 6:30 a.m. he writes "Still failing and labored breathing...the least touch of his body surface would cause and electric jerk through body"; at 7 a.m. he notes "Pulse and respiration failing much," and finally, at 7:22 a.m. he writes simply "Death closed the scene. He slept."
The next page and a half contain explicit medical observations on loss of brain tissue due to the wound. Stone then provides (pages 5 and 6) a narrative of "the autopsy of our late President." Present for this post mortem were Surgeon General Barnes, Dr. Crane, and Dr. Taft; Stone was informed by Dr. Brown, the embalmer, that "the embalmment of the body...would immediately follow our necropsy..." Much additional medical detail, follows, including very precise descriptions of the wound, and the exact course of the fatal projectile fired by Booth: "the ball pierced the durameter and through posterior lobe of the Left hemisphere of the brain...it entered the left lateral ventricle...inclining upwards and inward...and lodged just above the Corpus straetum of the left side...." The notes for Stone's lecture seem incomplete at the end, and it is possible the manuscript represents a draft text or rough outline for the lecture.
[With:] STONE. Autograph manuscript description and carefully drawn coat-of arms of Stone, dated 1866. 1 page, 12mo.
Provenance: Dr. Max Thorek, small ownership stamp verso of p.6 (sale, Sotheby Parke Bernet, 15 November 1960, lot 334) -- Philip D. Sang (sale, Sotheby Parke Bernet, 26 April 1978, lot 198).