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Modern Medicine Might Have Saved Lincoln
Pcol writes "For the past 13 years the University of Maryland School of Medicine has presented a historical clinicopathological conference where they consider famous historical medical cases such as the death of Alexander the Great and composer Ludwig van Beethoven and provide a modern diagnosis and treatment in each case. This year Dr. Thomas M. Scalea, physician-in-chief for the R Adams Cowley Shock Trauma Center discusses if the world's first center for trauma victims could have improved the outcome had Lincoln's assassination occurred in 2007. 'This could be a recoverable injury, with a reasonable expectation he would survive,' Scalea said, noting that assassin's weapon was relatively impotent compared to the firepower now on the streets today. The modern prognosis predicts that Lincoln might have conceivably recovered enough to return to the White House to complete his second term."
Besides that Mrs. Lincoln... how was the play?
So, what this article is saying is, "Today's technology better than technology 150 years ago..."
And, as pointed out in the article, the weapon used then was relatively impotent. Would it not be safe to consider that if the assassination were committed today the assassin likely would have also used updated technology (i.e., something more, ahem, potent)?
do they have similar presentations at conferences, like how the civil war would have ended if the south had stealth bombers... and how Hannibal would have done if he had a fleet of Hummers with 50cal BMGs?
...Is that because you don't need a brain to be president?
Of course... it could also be said that "modern security could have prevented the weapon being anywhere near the president in the first place."
"They said I probly shouldn't fly with just one eye," "I am Bender. Please insert girder."
And future medicine might have brought him back from the dead, able to play piano and fly! Or maybe not. No medicine might have saved George Washington, instead of the leeches.
Such pointless speculation. Yes, obviously better medical care could have saved a lot of people. How about "Modern Medicine Could Have Prevented Black Plague!" Maybe, "85% of amputations during the civil war wouldn't have occurred with modern surgery!" Seriously, I can keep this up all day...
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
If only cryogenic resurrection centers had existed at that time we might still have Lincoln with us today.
Your courageous and selfless spelling corrections have made me a better person.
I'd be more impressed if modern science managed to bring Lincoln back from the dead. ;)
More Twoson than Cupertino
Because I just saw him on TV with a gopher
...what kind of gun would he have been shot with had today's technology been around?
and don't forget, they didn't even have the catcher in the rye back then.
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
Lincoln was shot with a .41 derringer, possibly using a rimfire cartridge filled with black power link
.8 inch diameter hole as opposed to the .41 inch hole left by the derringer that did not penetrate
It consisted of a 130 grain lead bullet propelled at 425 ft/second and had a total energy of right around 52 ft. lbs.
Compare that to a modern day 40 S&W cartridge (used by most police today), that sends a 135 grain modern day Jacketed Hollow Point expanding bullet at a velocity of 1200 ft/second producing around 432 ft. lbs. of energy out of a 4 inch barrel (slight loss of velocity for a shorter barrel). This would have gone clean through the head, leaving an approximately
link
He most likely would not have survived if this happened in the modern day.
I've read Slashdot for the last 5 years, and now I start posting... Go figure
What would happen today is that the bullet would be deflected by Chuck Norris' beard...Lincoln's head would explode out of shear amazement.
Bill Clinton: Pimp we can believe in. - The Shirt!!!
In other news, a recent study shows that using modern materials as well as safety and engineering best practices might have prevented the Titanic disaster.
Seriously, it's been said many times on here already, but, how is this news?
Curiosity was framed, Ignorance killed the cat.
This year Dr. Thomas M. Scalea, physician-in-chief for the R Adams Cowley Shock Trauma Center discusses if the world's first center for trauma victims could have improved the outcome had Lincoln's assassination occurred in 2007
They failed to take into account how frail and weak a Lincoln would be at the age of 198. Surely this would offset most of the benefits of modern medicine.
Honestly, guys, do I have to do all of your thinking for you?
An assassin today wouldn't use an outdated gun. He'd use an automatic, if available (Uzis come to mind) and spray his target. Or he would use a weapon with greater impact.
Of course it's easy to say today all those people who were murdered could have been saved with modern medicine. I'm quite aware that assassins are aware of this and use methods that prove to be fatal compared to the potential of their adversaries, the medics trying to save the life of the target.
Think of Caesar. Back then a stab anywhere in the abdomen was pretty much a surefire way to kill. Today you might have to hit your mark, and even then...
Think of all those people who were poisoned. How many would go to a doc today and he'd find out immediately and before it's too late that they are poisoned and what the antidote would be? Would an assassin use the same poison? No, he'd pick a killing method that can't be countered. Just like they did back then.
So, generally, I wouldn't read too much into this. Yes, they could have been saved by modern medicine if someone was stupid enough to try to kill them in an old fashion way.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Any of us can sit around and speculate about what would happen if Carthage had cannons, if Herodotus had a laptop, if the Romans had camcorders,
I'm particularly interested in what would happen if Caligula had a camcorder.
If I recall history correctly, it was not Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation nor even the defeat of the Confederate States in the Civil War that brought our country together. Lincoln's death had a major impact on the people as a whole. Reunification was cemented by it. The south was embarrassed by Boothe's action and rebellious groups ceased their activities.
Lincoln was a visionary and a very ethical man according to the history books. Had he lived, the country likely would have remained divided amongst the peoples, mentally and spiritually. I doubt our country would have unified, worked together and developed as we have. Very possibly Japan and Russia would have ended up as the only super powers in the 30's and 40's and that would leave us in a fascist/socialist/communist world.
SEE what havoc modern medicine can wreak?
Besides, if Lincoln were alive today he'd be appalled at the current legal, political and governmental systems we have in place. No room for ethics whatsoever. He has more value on the penny and the $5 bill. Sad really.
...they'll announce "We finally have the technology to save Lincoln."
Obligatory Joke:
If Lincoln were alive, what would he be doing today?
Clawing desperately at the lid of his coffin.
They weren't more civil at any point in time, except in some formal settings. We can probably say that when gentlemen met at a posh club, they weren't calling each other cocksuckers, but then again even today they still don't. Move out of that setting, though, and it wasn't some rose-coloured golden age of being nice.
For starters, in that same age, they had just fought a war over, you know, _slavery_. People were bought and sold, treated in some cases worse than cattle, and savagely whipped or occasionally executed on a whim. How's that for being nice to one's fellow humans?
And speaking of that civil war, it saw its share of such colourful characters as Bloody Bill Anderson. The guy was _proud_ of applying terror tactics and executions not only against captured soldiers, but against civillian union sympathisers too.
Newspapers had not yet discovered that it pays to at least pretend to be impartial and objective. Yeah, I know they still aren't really, but back then they didn't even bother pretending. Lopsided, inflamatory and outright insulting journalism was the order of the day. Mud-slinging and outright libel were just normal political tools.
And then you should see what they said about other races and people. If you think nowadays' coverage of Iraq was a shame, back then it was orders of magnitude worse. It was for example the age of "white man's burden" and "mission to civilize" theories, where three quarters of the globe (including such civilizations like China or Japan) were presented as worse than Neanderthals, and it was the _burden_ of us poor white guys from the west to go sneer at them and shaft them, as some civilizing mission. And that was actually the _nice_ version.
It was also the age of such things as train robberies. No, they didn't jump into the train from horseback like in the movies. They just derailed the train, lots of people died, and the survivors got robbed.
It was the age of driving the natives out of their lands, and the occasional massacre. Custer for example wasn't a gentleman soldier in the war against savages, as the media at the time presented him. He was a guy who massacred whole camps, including a good percentage of the women and children, and held the survivors hostage (again, unarmed women and children) to force the rest of the tribe to accept being pushed into a reservation.
Etc, etc, etc.
The past _never_ was as cheerfully rose coloured as naive nostalgia presents it. That goes not only for the 19'th century. The Renaissance wasn't a cheerful age, like ren faires would have you believe, but a shithole that turned the whole european culture morbid and depressive for centuries. The knights in shiny armour weren't ideals of chivalry, but... well, let's just say that one manual for knights advised them to literally beat their wives senseless (as in, literally, until she loses consciousness) to keep them in line, and to break the wife's nose so other men won't find her pretty any more. And that's just one of the many atrocities of that caste. Etc.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.