ed his mortal wound. The
President had been shot in the back part of the head, behind the left
ear. I easily removed the obstructing clot of blood from the wound,
and this relieved the pressure on the brain.

The assassin of President Lincoln had evidently carefully planned to
shoot to produce instant death, as the wound he made was situated
within two inches of the physiological point of selection, when
instant death is desired. A Derringer pistol had been used, which had
sent a large round ball on its awful mission through one of the
thickest, hardest parts of the skull and into the brain. The history
of surgery fails to record a recovery from such a fearful wound and I
have never seen or heard of any other person with such a wound, and
injury to the sinus of the brain and to the brain itself, who lived
even for an hour.

As the President did not then revive, I thought of the other mode of
death, apnoea, and assumed my preferred position to revive by
artificial respiration. I knelt on the floor over the President, with
a knee on each side of his pelvis and facing him. I leaned forward,
opened his mouth and introduced two extended fingers of my right hand
as far back as possible, and by pressing the base of his paralyzed
tongue downward and outward, opened his larynx and made a free
passage for air to enter the lungs. I placed an assistant at each of
his arms to manipulate them in order to expand his thorax, then slowly
to press the arms down by the side of the body, while I pressed the
diaphragm upward: methods which caused air to be drawn in and forced
out of his lungs.

During the intermissions I also with the strong thumb and fingers of
my right hand by intermittent sliding pressure under and beneath the
ribs, stimulated the apex of the heart, and resorted to several other
physiological methods. We repeated these motions a number of times
before signs of recovery from the profound shock were attained; then a
feeble action of the heart and irregular breathing followed.

The effects of the shock were still manifest by such great
prostration, that I was fearful of any extra agitation of the
President's body, and became convinced that something more must be
done to retain life. I leaned forcibly forward directly over his body,
thorax to thorax, face to face, and several times drew in a long
breath, then forcibly breathed directly into his mouth and nostrils,
which expanded his lungs and improved his respirations.