Lincoln and Medicine

1. Young Lincoln, 1809–42

1 c h a p t e r o n e Young Lincoln, 1809–42 As most people know, Abraham Lincoln was born near Hodgenville , Kentucky, on February 12, 1809, the second child of Thomas and Nancy Hanks Lincoln. Abraham had an older sister, Sarah, and a younger brother, Thomas, who died in infancy. The family moved to a farm on Knob Creek in 1811 but soon left Kentucky entirely, moving to Indiana in late 1816. Abraham’s mother died on October 5, 1818, of milk sickness, a disease spread through the milk of cows that have eaten a poisonous plant. Thomas Lincoln remarried just over a year later. The extended family located in Illinois in 1830. The following year, Abraham moved away from home, ending up in the town of New Salem. Little information beyond the basics survives about Abraham Lincoln’s childhood and youth. The majority of it is in reminiscences collected from friends and acquaintances by his former law partner William H. Herndon after Lincoln’s death. Only a tiny fraction of that information pertains to incidents of Lincoln’s health. Lincoln apparently had a relatively healthy childhood, as testified by his stepmother, Sarah Bush Johnston Lincoln. She claimed he “never was sick” and was “more fleshy” when the family lived in Indiana than after they moved to Illinois. Lincoln did experience several accidents, however. When the family still resided in Kentucky, Lincoln and a young friend, Austin Gollaher, were trying to cross Knob Creek on a log. Lincoln fell into five or six feet of water and probably would have drowned if Gollaher had not rescued him.1 2 | Young Lincoln, 1809–42 A further traumatic incident occurred in Indiana when Lincoln was nine, one that Lincoln even mentioned himself. He had taken grain to Noah Gordon’s mill. To speed up the horse at the grindstone, Lincoln shouted and hit the animal with a whip. The horse kicked Lincoln in the head, knocking him out, or as Lincoln phrased it, he was “apparently killed for a time.” When he came to, Lincoln finished the sentence he had started before he was kicked, an action that several people have suggested was indicative of petit mal epileptic seizures that Lincoln then supposedly experienced for the rest of his life.2 Although there is little evidence for further seizure episodes, Lincoln may have suffered other permanent injuries. He possibly had nerve damage, causing his eyelid to droop and the corner of his mouth to curl on one side. The head injury may also have contributed to his later headaches. Some have suggested that Lincoln’s eye misalignment and occasional jerking of the left eye were results of being kicked by the horse. Others have pointed out that Lincoln’s son Robert and several other relatives had various eye problems, so the condition was probably hereditary, perhaps a form of crossed eyes.3 As a young man of nineteen, Lincoln, with Allen Gentry, started from Indiana and took a flatboat of cargo down the Mississippi River to New Orleans. “[O]ne night they were attacked by seven negroes with intent to kill and rob them. They were hurt some in the melee, but succeeded in driving the negroes from the boat” and quickly pushed away from shore, Lincoln reported in his 1860 autobiography. Apparently the injuries were not severe. Given Lincoln’s avid participation in wrestling and other physical sports, it would be surprising if he did not experience some minor injuries while engaging in those activities as well, but nothing has been recorded about them. Lincoln and his family all seem to have had malaria in the fall of 1830, soon after they moved to the Decatur, Illinois, area. This illness apparently helped motivate them to move again soon after. Lincoln may also have had malaria during the summer of 1835 when he was living in New Salem.4 One of Lincoln’s health issues, which was a topic of discussion during his lifetime and remains a subject of considerable interest, was his mental state, especially the matter of his depressions and melancholy. Young Lincoln, 1809–42 | 3 Lincoln had two major incidents of depression that lasted more than a week. The first occurred during the late summer of 1835. A friend of his, Ann Rutledge, had died on August 25, probably of typhoid fever. The exact nature of Lincoln’s relationship to Ann has been...