Many school children in the United States memorize President Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, considered one of history’s most brilliant speeches and a model of brevity and persuasive rhetoric.
But according to two medical researchers at University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston, most historians have failed to recognize that when Lincoln delivered it on Nov. 19, 1863, he was in the early stages of a life-threatening illness — a serious form of smallpox. Their report appears in the current issue of Journal of Medical Biography, a scholarly quarterly published by the Royal Society of Medicine Press in London.
Almost a third of those contracting this serious form of smallpox in the mid-19th century died, the researchers said.
Link via Andrew Sullivan. NewMexiKen agrees with Sullivan: “Ju[s]t when you thought he couldn’t be more impressive a figure …”