Where was the autopsy performed at on Lincoln?

Question

And whatever happened to his brain?

Was he also embalmed?

Answer 1

After President Abraham Lincoln passed away on the morning of April 15, 1865, his body was returned by hearse to the White House shortly after 9:00 A.M. Accompanied by an escort of cavalry, the solemn procession slowly moved up 10th Street to G Street and thence to the White House. Mr. Lincoln's temporary coffin was wrapped in an American flag. His remains were transported to the Guest Room which was on the second floor at the front right-hand corner of the building (northwest corner). Nine men were present for the autopsy. These included Surgeon General Dr. Joseph K. Barnes, Lincoln family physician, Dr. Robert King Stone, Dr. Charles Sabin Taft, Assistant Surgeon General Dr. Charles H. Crane, Army Assistant Surgeon William Morrow Notson, General Rucker of the Army's Quartermaster Department (whose men had escorted the hearse back to the White House), Lincoln's friend, Orville H. Browning, Army Assistant Surgeon Joseph Janvier Woodward (who also assisted with and wrote the details of John Wilkes Booth's autopsy), and Army Assistant Surgeon Edward Curtis. During the necropsy Mary Todd Lincoln sent a messenger to request a lock of hair, and a tuft was clipped from the head for her. Dr. Curtis and Dr. Woodward did the actual work of the autopsy. Dr. Curtis' informal description of the autopsy (in a letter to his mother) is as follows (Dr. Woodward's formal report follows Dr. Curtis' description):

"The room...contained but little furniture: a large, heavily curtained bed, a sofa or two, bureau, wardrobe, and chairs comprised all there was. Seated around the room were several general officers and some civilians, silent or conversing in whispers, and to one side, stretched upon a rough framework of boards and covered only with sheets and towels, lay - cold and immovable - what but a few hours before was the soul of a great nation. The Surgeon General was walking up and down the room when I arrived and detailed me the history of the case. He said that the president showed most wonderful tenacity of life, and, had not his wound been necessarily mortal, might have survived an injury to which most men would succumb...Dr. Woodward and I proceeded to open the head and remove the brain down to the track of the ball. The latter had entered a little to the left of the median line at the back of the head, had passed almost directly forwards through the center of the brain and lodged. Not finding it readily, we proceeded to remove the entire brain, when, as I was lifting the latter from the cavity of the skull, suddenly the bullet dropped out through my fingers and fell, breaking the solemn silence of the room with its clatter, into an empty basin that was standing beneath. There it lay upon the white china, a little black mass no bigger than the end of my finger - dull, motionless and harmless, yet the cause of such mighty changes in the world's history as we may perhaps never realize....silently, in one corner of the room, I prepared the brain for weighing. As I looked at the mass of soft gray and white substance that I was carefully washing, it was impossible to realize that it was that mere clay upon whose workings, but the day before, rested the hopes of the nation. I felt more profoundly impressed than ever with the mystery of that unknown something which may be named 'vital spark' as well as anything else, whose absence or presence makes all the immeasurable difference between an inert mass of matter owning obedience to no laws but those covering the physical and chemical forces of the universe, and on the other hand, a living brain by whose silent, subtle machinery a world may be ruled.

The weighing of the brain... gave approximate results only, since there had been some loss of brain substance, in consequence of the wound, during the hours of life after the shooting. But the figures, as they were, seemed to show that the brain weight was not above the ordinary for a man of Lincoln's size."

Dr. Woodward's formal report of the autopsy, written to the Surgeon General, is as follows:

Surgeon General's Office

Washington City D.C.

April 15, 1865

Brigadier General J.K. Barnes

Surgeon General U.S.A.

General:



I have the honor to report that in obedience to your orders and aided by Assistant Surgeon E. Curtis, U.S.A., I made in your presence at 12 o'clock this morning an autopsy on the body of President Abraham Lincoln, with the following results: The eyelids and surrounding parts of the face were greatly ecchymosed and the eyes somewhat protuberant from effusion of blood into the orbits.

There was a gunshot wound of the head around which the scalp was greatly thickened by hemorrhage into its tissue. The ball entered through the occipital bone about one inch to the left of the median line and just above the left lateral sinus, which it opened. It then penetrated the dura matter, passed through the left posterior lobe of the cerebrum, entered the left lateral ventricle and lodged in the white matter of t