A Finger in Lincoln's Brain: What Modern Science Reveals about Lincoln, His Assassination, and Its Aftermath

by E. Lawrence Abel

Overview

This intriguing book examines Lincoln's assassination from a behavioral and medical sciences perspective, providing new insights into everything from ballistics and forensics to the medical intervention to save his life, the autopsy results, his compromised embalming, and the final odyssey of his bodily remains.

In this book, E. Lawrence Abel sheds much-needed light on the fascinating details surrounding the death of Abraham Lincoln, including John Wilkes Booth's illness that turbaned him into an assassin, the medical treatment the president is alleged to have received after he was shot, and the significance of his funeral for the American public. The author provides an in-depth analysis of the science behind the assassination, a discussion of the medical care Lincoln received at the time he was shot and the treatment he would have received if he were shot today, and the impact of his death on his contemporaries and the American public.

The book examines Lincoln's fatalism and his unbridled ambition in terms of empirical psychological science rather than the fanciful psychoanalytical explanations that often characterize Lincoln psychohistories. The medical chapters challenge the long-standing description of Lincoln's last hours and examine the debate about whether Lincoln's doctors inadvertently doomed him.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781440831188
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Academic
Publication date:	01/16/2015
Pages:	296
Sales rank:	988,908
Product dimensions:	6.20(w) x 9.30(h) x 3.70(d)

About the Author

E. Lawrence Abel, PhD, is distinguished faculty professor of psychology and professor of obstetrics and gynecology at Wayne State University.

Table of Contents

Preface ix

Acknowledgments xi

1 A Target on His Back 1

2 A Fever in the Blood 19

3 For Want of a Nail 45

4 A Lucky Shot? 63

5 A Story Too Good to Fact Check 69

6 Deathbed Vigil 79

7 We Traced the Wound 91

8 Ballistics: The Science of Lincoln's Gunshot Wound 101

9 Did Lincoln's Doctors Doom Him? 105

10 Embalming Lincoln 113

11 We Mourn a Father Slain 129

12 The Politics of Death 137

13 Binding Up the Nation's Wounds 145

14 Death Will Not Be Cheated 157

15 "Now He Belongs to the Ages" 167

16 There Will Be Blood 175

17 "Not So Black and Shiney as It Was Long Ago" 187

Notes 201

Bibliography 233

Index 251