Doc Who Received JFK After He Was Shot In Dallas Describes Efforts To Save Him—& What Happened Next

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At today's House Oversight Committee hearing, Dr. Don Curtis, a doctor at Dallas's Parkland Memorial Hospital who was on hand when Presdent John F. Kennedy was brought in after being shot, spoke about what he saw when JFK was brought in.

Transcript

00:00Okay we are going to move to Dr. Curtis while you guys work through the mic issue but Mr. Bolden

00:04please be assured we will be coming back to you so we'll just pass. We will be coming back though.

00:10Dr. Curtis if you can. Thank you. My story begins when I

00:17left my office to go to get something to eat before I did surgery and to do that I had to go

00:24by the emergency room and when I went by the emergency room a policeman came out of the door

00:29into the emergency room grabbed my shoulder he said are you a doctor?

00:36Can everybody hear? Yes sorry Dr. Curtis uh Mr. Bolden we can hear you now your your microphone's

00:41working but Dr. Curtis is doing their opening statement so if you could just pause real quick

00:46and then put yourself on mute. Thank you. Dr. Curtis please continue. All right so uh the policeman

00:53asked me if I was a doctor and I said yes and he grabbed me by the arm and pulled me into the

01:00emergency room and took me to the trauma room and uh when I looked in the trauma room there was three

01:06people in the room one was the president and he was laying on the gurney and an extremist and the other

01:14was Dr. Carrico James Carrico and one nurse and the reason Dr. Carrico was on his own is because the uh

01:25Governor Conley was brought in before him and he was uh very seriously ill and the staff all the staff

01:34in the emergency room went to help him and then Dr. Carrico was left to take care of the president by

01:40himself. So I walked in and he had just placed a endotracheal tube and uh then I walked up and held

01:49the tube so he could connect the bird machine to it. The bird machine is an intermittent positive

01:55pressure uh respiratory help and it works by filling the lungs and and then letting the air come back out

02:03and the way it works is that the uh the inspiration continues to uh certain pressure and then the

02:12expiration continues to another low pressure and therefore uh that that space is the uh the the

02:22breathing normally that's about 10 or 15 minutes uh 10 or 15 times during a minute and but in this case

02:31it was it was going about 100 to 125 conversions in a minute so it was rat-a-tat-tat-tat-tat and

02:46and I'd never I knew the machine Dr. Carrico knew the machine we used it a lot and uh so the question was

02:55is is is the machine not working or is there two blocked or one and he had placed the tube in and

03:02uh if you place it in a tracheal tube you place it between the cords and then you know you're in the

03:08trachea and you've got an airway but in this case apparently we didn't have an airway and finally uh it was

03:16a question but is that the machine or is it what is it and so finally it got to a point where I said Jimmy

03:22what do you want to do and he had already made a decision he said tracheostomy we need to do a

03:27trach so if there was going to be a trach well I knew the shirt would be in the way so I moved around

03:36to take the shirt off and the nurses the way ahead of me with her scissors we took the shirt off and in

03:42the meantime Dr. Malcolm Perry uh came in and he's uh on the medical staff he's a professor in the medical

03:50school senior to Dr. Carrico so he decided to do the tracheostomy and then Dr. Carrico said to me Don

03:59why don't you go ahead and do a cut down on that left leg and uh so I I went and did that

04:06okay to cut down is a very small operation but it has is a very important thing to do the um

04:13uh reason for doing it is that most patients will come in to the emergency room as be bled out where

04:21their blood volume is low and if the blood volume is low well then the heart doesn't have anything to

04:27pump and that is your cause of death well if you can replenish the blood volume quickly well then that

04:36causes a better chance of survival though so the cut down is uh to put a catheter in a vein so that you

04:45can uh get the fluid in or faster and uh the operation is to make an incision across the the front of the

04:55shin and dissect out the saphenous vein which is large vein that goes right up the front of the leg

05:02put a catheter make a little hole in the catheter put the catheter in there and uh then put a stitch

05:09around the vein to close it off and hold the catheter in place the nurse at the meantime has the uh

05:21bag hanging with the iv fluid in 500 cc's in a collar that she can pump up and when she does that

05:28well she uh it forces the fluid into the into the vein and uh so that's what i did then

05:39after i did that then dr perry had already completed the tracheostomy and i was uh looked up and then

05:49the president had heart had stopped or it wasn't running they put a monitor on the president found

05:55out his heart was not bleeding and so the uh and and so he external cardiac massage was being done

06:03by uh kemp clark the chief of neurosurgery and somebody relieved him and kemp clark went and

06:10picked up the head and stopped their resuscitation this wound is not compatible with life

06:16you're not dead quiet nobody knew what to say nobody said anything for the longest time

06:23then he said okay i let me and he looked at by that time the chiefs of all the surgical services

06:31were against the wall across the room from me and all in white coats and they had responded to the uh

06:37uh to the call that they needed help and so he said pointed them out i need to tell each of you

06:44individually what the wound is so you can say that later on and then he described the wound as about

06:53a three or four inch hole in the posterior cranium and then uh there's a bullet hole in the right temple

07:02so he described it that the bullet came through the temple into the cranial vault created a huge

07:11pressure in the cranial vault and when the bullet finally tumbled into the posterior wall it blew it out

07:18and he explained all that to individually to these five doctors seven doctors and those doctors knew what

07:26was happening and what happened to the president and the the wound that killed him and they never

07:32were called by the by the uh war commission so uh that didn't work and so after that i stood there

07:44and i couldn't leave because mrs kennedy was to my right and i couldn't get past her so i had to just

07:51stay there for a while but then eventually everybody left and i went around to look at the wound and i

07:58couldn't see it was laying on the pillow but i could see where it was then i left there and went into an

08:04adjacent room the uh x-ray waiting room was a large room and right in the middle of the room was lyndon

08:12johnson and he was telling people to go talk on the phone and and uh he was obviously he'd set the

08:20government up and he had taken control and then i looked around i couldn't see a single person i thought

08:28looked like secret service i couldn't see any weapons that were protecting him and i was a little

08:35uncomfortable being there myself because at that time we had no idea what was going on with our

08:41government we didn't know if the government would be intact or not but it made me feel good to know

08:46that he was right in the middle of the room and and he was the president he was absolutely fearless

08:53then i wondered why is he so absolutely fearless i mean because if it was a coup he'd be the next one

09:01to go so with that i left and and that's what i learned in the emergency in the wrong trauma room

09:10then uh later we uh found out that the residents and interns should not talk to each other about this

09:19and so we didn't and uh dr carico and i would have lunch together many times often just him and me

09:28and we never mentioned it to each other and uh so one thing i'd like to get started today is that the

09:40magic bullet was a product of the warren commission that that doesn't make any sense and i can go through

09:48these these uh bullets that fell on the uh but i think i'm out of town well so just so you know we

09:56will be giving you opportunity to go back to that because we are very interested in that and thank you

10:00for that um because of previous uh technical issues mr bolden if you can please give your opening statement

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