Post-mortem

Lowell vs. Faxon and Hawkes never delivered a satisfactory sentence, his hip was never properly repaired, and at the time of his death Charles Lowell still wanted justice and answers. Dr. Greeley, his personal physician, wrote to Dr. Jonathan Mason Warren to inform him of Lowell’s passing and ask him for an autopsy. Warren sent his colleague Dr. Henry Oliver up to Ellsworth, Maine to perform the assessment and retrieve the physical hip. They brought it back to Boston (leaving the remainder of his body in Maine with family), and carefully pried apart the layers, finally being able to look directly at that which had proved so elusive forty years before.

After consulting with Oliver, the young Dr. Warren needed to decide if his father had been correct in his diagnosis of the case so many years before. According to Jonathan Mason Warren, it is evident that the hip was, in fact, dislocated, for he saw no sign of fracture anywhere on the pelvis (though it would have been difficult to be sure depending on its location and the way it healed). However, it was certain that it was a downwards and forwards luxation as opposed to one that shifted downwards and backwards (though contradictory to Sir Astley Cooper’s initial belief, it is now confirmed that these do exist). He explains that the head of the femur hid directly beneath the acetabulum, and would have been extremely difficult to detect even in very thin individuals, thereby defending (though simultaneously correcting) his father’s hypothesis.