14 DAY TRIAL // Man, this wasn't the most handsome American president... This year a research was made on laser scans of a bronze and a plaster copy of two masks of Lincoln's face, belonging to the Chicago History Museum.
This revealed a high degree of facial asymmetry: Lincoln's face was much smaller than the right one, a developmental condition named hemifacial microsomia, caused by many factors, from smallpox and heart illness to trauma or heredity. "Lincoln's contemporaries noted his left eye at times drifted upward independently of his right eye, a condition now termed strabismus. Lincoln's smaller left eye socket may have displaced a muscle controlling vertical movement," said lead author Dr. Ronald Fishman, a retired ophthalmologist and history buff.
"Most people's faces are asymmetrical, but Lincoln's case was extreme, with the bony ridge over his left eye rounder and thinner than the right side, and set backward." said Fishman.
"When Lincoln was a boy, he was kicked in the head by a horse. Laser scans cannot settle whether the kick or a developmental defect - or neither - contributed to Lincoln's lopsided face," said Fishman.
But now the Californian cardiologist John G. Sotos of Palo Alto has come up with the idea that the 16th American president suffered from a mutation named MEN 2B that could be easily tracked down through DNA analysis of the gene RET on chromosome 10, as he has commented to The Washington Post.
MEN 2B (multiple endocrine neoplasia type 2B) leads in 100 % of the cases to thyroid cancer and 50 % of the patients also develop adrenal gland cancer and could explain Lincol's great height and other conditions.
"In about half the cases, patients inherit the disease from a parent. There is a chance Lincoln's mother (who died at the age of 34) may have had it and it may have been responsible for the death of at least one of Lincoln's four sons, before reaching the age 20," Sotos told the Post.
There are about 500 MEN 2B patients in US and Lincoln would be the oldest case.
Marfan syndrome is a genetic condition inducing long arms, legs and fingers, loose joints, deformed breast-bone. MEN 2B can also cause a "marfanoid" look. MEN 2B causes neuromas (lumps of nerve tissue) on the tongue, lips and eyelids and Lincoln's lips have a bumpy shape in photographs. The growths also develop in the intestines provoking constipation and diarrhea, and it is known that Lincoln suffered from lifelong constipation.
It is believed that Lincoln was already experiencing cancer when assassinated, as many said that he had become thinner in the White House and 3 months before his death he fainted while getting up quickly from a chair. He experienced periodic severe headaches and cold hands and feet, main symptoms of pheochromocytoma, due to cancer in the adrenal gland.
Lincoln's sons Willie and Tad could have also had MEN 2B and images of the two also show the lip bumps. Willie died at 11 and Tad at 18, reportedly of typhoid fever and TBC.
"Tad had thyroid cancer that had spread to his chest and caused fluid to accumulate outside his lungs, a condition noted by physicians several times." said Sotos.