Word: schwartz
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Since then, Schwartz, now 60, has traced the Lincoln Marfan gene back to 16th century England and now is more certain than ever about his theory. In the Western Journal of Medicine, he strongly suggests that had John Wilkes Booth not fired the fatal shot on April 14, 1865, Lincoln would have died within a year from complications of Marfan's syndrome-for which there is still no cure...
...Schwartz points to the well-documented fact that Lincoln had disproportionately long arms, legs, hands and feet, even for a man of his height. While watching a regiment of Maine lumbermen during the Civil War, the President himself noted: "I don't believe that there is a man in that regiment with longer arms than mine." In 1907 a sculptor working with Lincoln casts observed that "the first phalanx of the middle finger is nearly half an inch longer than that of an ordinary hand." The President sometimes squinted with his left eye. All of these characteristics, according...
...Schwartz has also presented an ingenious bit of evidence that Lincoln had a specific cardiovascular problem also associated with Marfan's syndrome: imperfect closure of the valves of the aorta, the large artery that carries blood from the heart. The clue appeared in a picture of the President taken in 1863. Lincoln had his legs crossed, and in an otherwise sharp photo, the left foot-suspended in the air -is blurred. When viewing the print. Lincoln asked why the foot was fuzzy. A friend familiar with physiology suggested that the throbbing arteries in the leg might have caused some...
...Schwartz has also found in the President's own words what he believes to be good evidence that before Lincoln was shot he was "in a state of early congestive heart failure"-brought on by his aortic condition. About seven weeks before Lincoln's assassination, for example, he told his friend Joshua Speed: "My feet and hands of late seem to be always cold, and I ought perhaps to be in bed." Though he was only 56 in 1865, Abe was also easily fatigued toward the end. "There is only one word that can express my condition...
...Schwartz, who teaches medicine at the University of Southern California, concedes that his 20-year study is an "obsession." When his five children visited Disneyland with him, he recalls, he used to have Lincoln-head pennies in his pocket; they would be awarded to the first child who could identify "a Marfan" in the crowd. His office is cluttered with busts of Lincoln. In 1976 he abandoned private practice and joined the geriatric department of a state mental hospital. Reason: so that he could have nights and weekends free to search Lincoln literature for more clues to Marfan...