Would President Lincoln have survived if he had been shot today? It is possible, although not guaranteed. There have been several advances in medical care, and the way injured presidents are dealt with that might have made the difference.
Abraham Lincoln was shot by John Wilkes Booth on April 14th, 1865, at about 10:15 pm. John Wilkes Booth was a famous actor who had toured nationwide. His face and his name were fairly well known. Booth was very opposed to the idea of ending slavery and extremely against everything Lincoln stood for. He was a staunch Confederate and hated the fact that the North was winning the Civil War. Originally, Booth planned to kidnap Lincoln in order to trade him for Southern prisoners and, he hoped, break the North’s will to keep fighting. This plan never came to anything. It appears that on April 11th, Booth heard a speech where Lincoln said he wanted to give the vote to the freed slaves. This must have been the final straw for Booth and he seems to have started planning the assassination.
On the day of April 14th, by chance, Booth found out that Abraham Lincoln was going to watch the evening performance of Our American Cousin at Ford’s Theater. Once the performance was in full swing, he used his knowledge of the theater and his fame to get himself all the way up to the presidential box. The president was barely guarded, and Booth had no trouble entering the box. Once there, he shot President Lincoln. The bullet entered through the back of Lincoln’s skull. It severed the left lateral sinus, which drains blood out of the left side of the brain. The bullet went through the membrane covering the brain, went through the left posterior lobe of the brain, through the left lateral ventricle, and lodged in the white matter. It fractured both orbital plates, drove bone into the brain, and filled the eye sockets with blood. The wounds were pronounced fatal and Lincoln died at 7:22 the next morning.
So, would he have survived today? Well, first we need to look at how modern presidents are guarded. There is no way that a lone gunman such as Booth could get anywhere near a modern president in a closed location like a theater. All of the people allowed inside would be vetted and the Secret Service would be monitoring every direction around the president. If someone like Booth was let in, he would presumably be checked to see if he is armed.
When Lincoln was shot, there were two medically trained people that happened to be on site, but there was not much they could do. Lincoln was transported to a local house, where he spent his last night. There were many reasons why he died, but one of the main ones was blood loss. If, somehow, a gunman could shoot a modern president in a similar situation, the medical response would be staggeringly quick. Whenever the president travels, a doctor is always with him and the Beast, the car the president is transported in, contains a supply of blood. Also, trauma teams are always put on standby in major hospitals near where the president will be. If a modern president was shot in a theater, he would get high level care instantly, a blood transfusion during the very fast drive to the local hospital, where he would be treated by a trauma team.
Within fifteen minutes of arriving at the trauma center, Lincoln’s brain would have been scanned, he would have been intubated to help his breathing, he would have received a concentrated salt IV to keep his blood pressure up and remove fluid from his damaged brain, and a neurosurgeon would have started operating. The brain surgeon would remove the bullet, the bits of brain, repair the parts of the brain they can, and implant catheters to reduce the pressure in the brain and to monitor blood flow and oxygen levels. Lincoln would then be taken to the intensive care unit where all of his bodily functions would be monitored because it is very common for organs to start shutting down after a brain injury.
There are people who have survived brain injuries like Lincoln’s, which does show that he might have survived if he had been shot today. His odds would have been far better than the average person, simply because the level of medical care he would get would be the best that was available. However, all of these people were left with brain damage. If Lincoln had survived, he could have come away with a different personality. He would be more impulsive and less able to make decisions. He would not be good at solving problems. He would probably have been paralyzed on his right side, blind in his right eye, and he would have had trouble speaking and writing. So, could he have survived? The chances are not bad. Could he have continued on as president? No. And this is what I learned today.
Photo by David Dibert: https://www.pexels.com/photo/lincoln-memorial-750905/
Sources
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Wilkes_Booth
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_of_Abraham_Lincoln
https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2013/11/would-lincoln-have-survived-if-he-was-shot-today/281680/
https://www.nps.gov/foth/learn/historyculture/faq-aftermath.htm
https://spyscape.com/article/7-top-secrets-about-the-beast-presidential-limo
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