August 04, 2004

• ...and the hairline, eyebrows, eyelids, nose, and especially those big, goofy ears. good find, nos.
• Can we please stop posting about presidents? Or is this the August surprise? /runs
• really cool find, with lots of interesting tidbits. i found this page, Abraham Lincoln's Organic and Emotional Neurosis, to be particularly fascinating. and i agree, it's him, but not because of any particular detail. it just, you know, looks like him.
• Interesting to see him looking this young. Thanks, Nostril.
• It is amazing that a photograph that is at least 160 years old can be "Copyright Albert Kaplan 1983" as teh front page of the website claims.
• although everything else seems right, i just have trouble with those ear lobes. they say they started to protude from his forty pound weight loss. well, okay. but to my eyes those earliest lobes have cut and definition that are not present in the authenticated ones. can ears really change that much? i've never noticed that in people. nostrildamus, thanks for the word 'hypermetropia'. that's what i have and i could never figure out why i would get instances of double vision. you have expanded the horizons of my self-exploration.
• I fancy young Lincoln
• I don't see it. The 1862 portrait is hard to compare because he grew a beard later in life but if that 1848 image has been properly authenticated as Lincoln then I would say that this "1841" one is of a different man. Compare the distance between the earlobe and the jaw. To me the eyelids look a bit heavy in the younger portrait, the nose is different, so are the lips and the general shape of the face. There are similarities though. There's that spot on the cheek below his left eye and things like the ears which makes me wonder whether he was a family member but they are not the same person. I'm also somewhat skeptical that this authentication has been done by a small scale internet site rather than a big name museum - especially when considering who we're talking about here. And if the date of 1841 is correct then this image would be remarkable not only for being the earliest known photograph of Lincoln but also for being amongst the earliest photographs of any American. Period. Not impossible by any means but you'd think it would have been a pretty big deal. Surely there would be some mention of it in a diary or something.
• I think it looks more like Kramer.
• The jaw is very different from the 1848 picture. Jaws wouldn't change so much with age, would they? I had heard, though, that Lincoln had an unusual bone condition, which could have been progressive.
• that whole page about how lincoln developed the personality he did due to a head injury? wow. reading it... well, let's just say it really, really shows that it was written in 1952. we don't use words like "physiopsychologic" any more. lots of it seemed not far removed from phrenology, if you ask me. most of us probably have bene told that the left side of the brain controls the right side of the body, and vice versa (it's mostly true, too). so, the idea that a horse kicking in the left side of his head could cause damage to muscle function in the left side of his head was a stretch even for an old doctor in 1952 - the amount of waffling and sequential nuclei that he suggests would need to be damaged due to a whole series of coincidentally located hematomas, well, it just doesn't follow. there's probably a much simpler explanation, like genetic defects, or some other childhood trauma. no need to invoke a whole series of crazy happenstance possibilities, all based on a diary entry saying he was kicked and a life mask showing a knot on his skull. but the good dr. keeps on plugging away at his theory, even when he has to admit that some of the damage he suggests would have to be to brain regions that exhibit bilateral and not unilateral control, such that damage to one side of the head would affect both sides, and not just the left. it would have been a lot easier for everyone if the guy writing this had been able to attribute lincoln's melancholia to (mild to moderate) manic depression, rather than assuming that his bouts of deep blue funk were brought on by eyestrain. oh and indigestion, too. from insufficient bile. which of course gave him a muddy complexion, to boot. (really. it actually says that. how... quaint.) anyway, i was kicked in the head by a horse at the age of 4, but i don't think it helped my chance of becoming president. i certainly haven't developed bouts of melancholia. hmmm... perhaps i ought to start letting my eye drift around a little more, that way i can start developing my nervous indigestion and deep-grooved crow's feet... white house, here i come!
• monkeyfilter: kicked in the head by a horse at the age of 4
• um, CLF, for what it is worth (perhaps little) the talk of bile is historical reporting, not medical opinion: "Some of his friends thought, because of the muddy, leathery condition of his skin, that this facial lapse was due to indigestion and insufficient secretion of bile", and is presented in a long string of historical impressions of aby baby's demeanor and physical condition by contemporaries. i didn't get the impression that the author was claiming that the bile issue was part of his hypothesis.
• I was unconvinced until I read the analysis. It's amusing to think of a "pretty boy" Lincoln, before personal and professional crises aged and weathered him.
• Been told parts of the body keep on growing -- in men, ear and nose cartilage. So -- if this it true -- we all end up looking like Dumbo if we live long enough.
• Wow. Young Lincoln looks like a smarmy bastard!
• bees, it's true. Your bones stop growing but the cartilage continues, so the nose and ears do grow. And it's in women, too, although I only say that because I see it in my grandmother, who's 77. As for Lincoln, it's those hooded eyelids and the arched brows that look so alike to me. And the hair pattern, but that's as much a sign of fashion, I suppose, as the way an individual's hair grows.
• I'm with the skeptics. I'm bothered by the overbite and the larger eyelids in the earlier pic; just doesn't look like Lincoln to me.
• Hummanah! Kind of. I had a gigantic horse leap over a snowbank and plant a hoof squarely on the left side of my head when I was 10 or so. Lucky for me, I was in deep snow - but still had a ringing headache for three days. And migraines ever since. Coincidence? Did I have a concussion? Who knows? Doctors, schmoctors! Hippie parents are great! I expect to be premier any day - can't do any worse than the ding dong already there.
• moneyjane: ha! you have my sympathies. I resolved not to move home until he leaves office but dammit if he isn't sticking around. He is such a smarmy twat.
• most of us probably have bene told that the left side of the brain controls the right side of the body, and vice versa (it's mostly true, too). so, the idea that a horse kicking in the left side of his head could cause damage to muscle function in the left side of his head was a stretch even for an old doctor in 1952 Minor point, CLF: I have indeed been told that the left side of the brain controls the right side of the body, etc, but I've also been told the cross-over point is somewhere around the top of the spine. So an injury to one side of the head would be unlikely to damage muscle function below the neck on that side of the body, but facial damage might be another story. Disclaimer: I am not a doctor, nor a biologist, nor do I play one on television. No doubt if I've got this wrong someone will be along to correct me. Having said all that, please note that I don't actually disagree with your overall conclusion.
• ilyadeux - check this - I worked at a coffee place once where a co-worker actually got some jail time for getting busted at a environmental protest in the Elaho Valley. All the regulars kept asking, "Where's Chris? all day, and if we were going to visit him in the slam, and if we did, could we say hi for them? So I made this massive card out of cardboard, wrote "GET OUT OF JAIL SOON CARD" on it in big letters, and put it, and a pen, by the cash register so everybody could sign it for Chris. So in walks Gordon Campbell, who lives in the neighbourhood. He was leader of the Liberal Party, and very obviously going to be the next premier of B.C.(this is in 2000). So I say, "Hey - wanna sign this for my buddy Chris? It's a 'Get Out Of Jail Soon' card." So he says, "Sure", signs it, and then asks, "What's he in jail for?" Well, lucky for you, it's not for blowing up orphans, or, you know, treason. Chris treasures his card, I am sure, to this very day.
• brilliant! Serendipity is a beautiful thing.