It was the discovery of a lifetime. Helena Iles Papaioannou, a researcher with the Papers of Abraham Lincoln project, was meticulously combing through 1865 correspondence of the U.S. Surgeon General when she came upon the long-lost report of Charles Leale, the doctor who treated the president on the night he was shot.

While Dr. Leale’s later testimony at a congressional hearing was known to historians, his original 21-page clinical report written the day after the assassination was missing.

Leale, a 23-year-old Army doctor just out of medical school, was sitting only 40 feet from the Lincolns at Ford’s Theatre on April 14, 1865. He saw John Wilkes Booth jump to the stage, waving a dagger.

Hearing cries that the “president had been murdered,” and thinking that Lincoln had been stabbed, Leale rushed to the president’s box and found him paralyzed, comatose, and leaning against his wife. “O Doctor, do what you can for him,” cried Mary Lincoln several times.

“I commenced to examine his head ... and soon passed my fingers over a large firm clot of blood,” Leale wrote the next day. “The coagula I easily removed and passed the little finger of my left hand through the perfectly smooth opening made by the ball.”

By clearing away the blood clot, Leale relieved pressure on Lincoln’s brain and probably extended his life by some eight hours. Leale remained by the president’s side the entire night.

“What I found fascinating is the immediacy and the poignancy of the report,” says Daniel Stowell, director of the Papers of Abraham Lincoln project. “Leale had just gotten his medical license six weeks earlier, and he’s thrust into this historic event. He’s holding Lincoln’s wrist when he passes away. He goes home and writes up this account. It’s a first draft of history.”

The Lincoln Papers project has thus far identified some 90,000 documents written by or to Abraham Lincoln during his lifetime. Researchers have visited hundreds of repositories and scanned documents in 47 states. The project is sponsored by the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum in Springfield, Illinois.

The original text of the Leale report

“The theatre was well filled and the play of Our American Cousin progressed very pleasantly until about half past ten, when the report of a pistol was distinctly heard and, about a minute after, a man of low stature with black hair and eyes was seen leaping to the stage beneath, holding in his hand a drawn dagger.

While descending, his heel got entangled in the American flag, which was hung in front of the box, causing him to stumble when he struck the stage, but, with a single bound, he regained the use of his limbs and ran to the opposite side of the stage, flourishing in his hand a drawn dagger and disappearing behind the scene. 

I then heard cries that the ‘president had been murdered,’ which were followed by those of ‘Kill the murderer,’ ‘Shoot him,’ etc., which came from different parts of the audience.

I immediately ran to the president’s box and,