Newsmaker - Doctors Say Lincoln Ill at Gettysburg

May 24, 08:21 AM

Current Headlines: By Lindsey Tanner Associated Press

CHICAGO - Abraham Lincoln has been dead for 142 years, but he still manages to make medical headlines, this time from doctors who say he had a bad case of smallpox when he delivered the Gettysburg Address.

"If you play doctor, it's difficult to shut down the diagnostic process" when reading about historical figures, said Dr. Armond Goldman, an immunology specialist and professor emeritus at the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston. He and a colleague "diagnosed" serious smallpox in Lincoln after scouring historical documents, biographies and old newspaper clippings.

Their report appears in May's Journal of Medical Biography.

Heart illness, eye problems and depression are among other ailments modern-day doctors have investigated in the 16th president.

But smallpox might come as the biggest surprise to the public, especially if Lincoln had it when he spoke at Gettsburg.

According to Goldman and co-author Dr. Frank Schmalstieg, Lincoln fell ill Nov. 18, the day before giving the speech in Pennsylvania.

When Lincoln arrived at the battlefield to dedicate a cemetery for the fallen soldiers, he was weak, dizzy, and his face "had a ghastly color," according to the report.

On the train back to Washington that evening, Lincoln was feverish and had severe headaches. Then he developed back pains, exhaustion and a widespread scarlet rash that turned blister-like. A servant who tended to Lincoln during the three-week illness later developed smallpox and died in January 1864.

Rodney Davis, a Lincoln historian at Illinois' Knox College, said people who don't read Lincoln biographies may not know about his smallpox, but "it's not anything that's ever been suppressed. It's just never been all that significant given the highlights of his career."

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Not everyone agrees

Dr. William Schaffner, an infectious disease specialist at Vanderbilt University who scanned the report and just finished reading an Abraham Lincoln biography, said he's skeptical that Lincoln had any form of smallpox.

"I find the argument entrancing, but I don't find it convincing," Schaffner said.

Lincoln's symptoms could have been chickenpox or scarlet fever, a strep infection that also can cause a blister-like rash, Schaffner said.

"Here we are in the 21st century and we're trying to know and understand and read language of physicians in the 1850s," Schaffner said.

- Associated Press

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