Could Modern Medicine Have Saved Lincoln?

In their annual examination with the flexible retrospectoscope, medical experts last week took on the case of Abraham Lincoln at the 13th Historical Clinicopathological Conference, sponsored by the University of Maryland School of Medicine and the Veterans Affairs hospital.

Previous exercises have sought to diagnose illness or determine cause of death of famous people with incomplete medical records. They include Alexander the Great (typhoid fever complicated by Guillain-Barre syndrome), Ludwig van Beethoven (syphilis) and Edgar Allan Poe (rabies, a diagnosis now generally discredited). This year's attempted not to solve a mystery but rather to address an extreme hypothetical -- what might have happened to one of the country's greatest presidents if time travel were possible....