Vascular surgery: is our name Mudd or Quasimodo?

Abstract

Sic semper tyrannis (Thus always to tyrants) was the phrase uttered by John Wilkes Booth as he leaped 10 feet to the stage floor below from the Presidential box at Ford Theater after firing the fatal bullet into the brain of President Abraham Lincoln on Good Friday, Apr 14, 1865. Booth, an accomplished actor, was known for daring jumps and leaps during his performances, but on this occasion, after struggling in the Presidential box and stabbing Major Henry Rathbone, Booth was off balance and caught his spur in an American flag draped over the balcony, and landed awkwardly on the stage. This misstep resulted in a fractured fibula, and although Booth was mobile, he was now in need of medical attention. The resulting treatment of this fracture dramatically altered the life of one of our early medical colleagues, Dr Samuel Alexander Mudd. Dr Mudd was born on Dec 20, 1833, in Charles County, Maryland, where he became a farmer and a practicing physician after attending Georgetown College in Washington, DC, and ultimately graduating from the University of Maryland in Baltimore in 1856 after studying medicine and surgery. Times were hard because the country was in a depression, but Dr Mudd developed a successful medical practice and married his childhood sweetheart, Sarah Frances Dyer, on Nov 26, 1857. When shots were fired at Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor on Apr 12, 1861, additional southern states seceded to join the fledgling Confederacy, but Maryland was not among them. Maryland was a border state, with a large number of Confederate sympathizers, including Dr Mudd. He continued his life as a physician and farmer during the ensuing Civil War, but was most likely a member of the Confederate underground and subsequently became acquainted with some soon-to-be famous people.