Body-Dead
Abracoln, image by Daniel Y. Harris
The
Body of Abraham Lincoln
Kenneth
Goldsmith
The room contained but little
furniture: a large, heavily curtained bed, a sofa or two, bureau, wardrobe, and
chairs. 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.
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 mater, passed through the left posterior lobe of the
cerebrum, entered the left lateral ventricle and lodged in the white matter of
the cerebrum just above the anterior portion of the left corpus striatum, where
it was found.
The wound in the occipital bone was
quite smooth, circular in shape, with beveled edges. The opening through the
internal table being larger than that through the external table. The track of
the ball was full of clotted blood and contained several little fragments of
bone with small pieces of the ball near its external orifice. The brain around
the track was pultaceous and livid from capillary hemorrhage into its
substance. The ventricles of the brain were full of clotted blood. A thick clot
beneath the dura mater coated the right cerebral lobe.
There was a smaller clot under the dura
mater of the left side. But little blood was found at the base of the brain.
Both the orbital plates of the frontal bone were fractured and the fragments
pushed upwards toward the brain. The dura mater over these fractures was
uninjured. The orbits were gorged with blood.
Shot. One inch left median line
traversing left lateral sinus upper edge, through occipital bone toward edge of
lateral sinus. Thru occipital bone, touched ledge of lateral sinus, struck
posterior lobe traversing it in a horizontal place (passing forwards inclining
to the right). In orifice of wound a scale blood two-and-a-half inches in
track, pieces of bone—two pieces of bone about four inches in advance in track
of ball. Entered the left ventricle behind, followed the course of ventricle
accurately, inching upwards and inwards, ploughing thru the upper part of
thalamus nervorum opticorum, other two lodged in cerebral matter just above the
corpus stratum of the left side.
The brain track of ball was in a
bubbly disintegrated state.
Both ventricles filled with blood.
Whole brain engorged and bloody prints. More matter than wounds. On reviewing,
the dura mater was displaced with a large coagulation of blood—lying upon the
right hemisphere of the brain. Reviewing the dura mater, no wound in which was
found, we found the orbital plates of both sides, the seat of comminuted
fracture, the fragments being forced from within, outward. The orbit oculum
palpitated membrane and cavity was filled with blood. Origin of which we didn't
seek. The right had been notably protruded, later sank back after death.
Ecchymoses of the left eye first and right eye second.
Great oedema of sinus and a little
blood extravasated about shot wound, clean cut as if by a punch. Two feet off
orbital plates, very thin.
Kenneth
Goldsmith's writing has been called some of the most "exhaustive and
beautiful collage work yet produced in poetry" by Publishers Weekly. Goldsmith is the author of eight books of
poetry, founding editor of the online archive UbuWeb (http://ubu.com), and the editor I'll Be Your Mirror: The Selected Andy Warhol Interviews, which
is the basis for an opera, Trans-Warhol, premiering
in Geneva in March of 2007. Goldsmith is also the host of a weekly radio show
on New York City's WFMU. He teaches writing at The University of Pennsylvania,
where he is a senior editor of PennSound, a online poetry archive. More about
Goldsmith can be found on his author's page at the University of Buffalo's
Electronic Poetry Center: http://epc.buffalo.edu/authors/goldsmith.
