John Lattimer dies at 92

[Douglas Caddy]

Editing correction to subtitle to topic -- should read: Chosen by Kennedys to examine autopsy evidence.

John K. Lattimer, Urologist of Varied Expertise, Dies at 92

By DENNIS HEVESI

The New York Times

May 13, 2007

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/13/nyregion...amp;oref=slogin

John K. Lattimer, a prominent urologist, ballistics expert and collector of historical relics who treated top-ranking Nazis during the Nuremberg war crimes trials and was the first nongovernmental medical specialist allowed to examine the evidence in President John F. Kennedy’s assassination, died Thursday at a hospice near his home in Englewood, N.J. He was 92.

His death was announced by his daughter Evan Lattimer.

For 25 years, Dr. Lattimer was a professor and chairman of the urology department at the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Columbia University.

Dr. Lattimer was credited with helping to establish pediatric urology as a discipline, developing a cure for renal tuberculosis, writing 375 scientific papers and representing the United States at the World Health Organization.

His interests, however, spanned an array of fields. His 30-room, 1895 Federal-style home in Englewood was a virtual military museum until his collection went into storage last year. Its third floor was lined with medieval armor, Revolutionary and Civil War rifles and swords, a pile of cannonballs, World War II machine guns and German Lugers, and drawings by Adolf Hitler.

Dr. Lattimer had been fascinated by weapons since his childhood visits to his grandparents’ farm in Hubbardston, Mich., where he spent summer days hunting. That interest took a more serious turn during World War II, when he treated hundreds of casualties as an Army doctor during the Normandy invasion.

He became a ballistics expert and, after the killing of President Kennedy, a student of assassinations. In his collection was a blood-stained collar that President Lincoln wore to Ford’s Theater the night he was shot.

Dr. Lattimer wrote several articles in medical journals describing experiments he had conducted with rifles, scopes and ammunition similar to those used by President Kennedy’s assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald. Then, in 1972, the Kennedy family chose Dr. Lattimer to be the first nongovernmental expert to examine 65 X-rays, color photos and black-and-white negatives taken during the autopsy.

A front-page New York Times article, with a photograph of Dr. Lattimer, quoted him saying that the images “eliminate any doubt completely” about the validity of the Warren Commission’s conclusion that Oswald fired all the shots that struck the president.

Dr. Lattimer’s wartime experiences also prompted him to write a somewhat controversial book based, in large part, on his assignment to the medical team at the Nuremberg trials. The book, “Hitler’s Fatal Sickness and Other Secrets of the Nazi Leaders” (Hippocrene Books, 1999), records his professional impressions of the men and their conditions.

It includes a long chapter concluding that Hitler suffered from advanced Parkinson’s disease — probably the “faster moving post-encephalitic” type, Dr. Lattimer wrote — based on reports of Hitler’s tremors, first in the left hand, then spreading to other limbs, and his well-documented attacks of rage.

Dr. Lattimer theorized that the disease prompted him to make bizarre judgments that eventually cost Germany the war. Among the more macabre relics that Dr. Lattimer collected, in this case from his service at Nuremberg, is a glass ampoule that contained the dose of cyanide taken by Hermann Göring, the Luftwaffe commander, to commit suicide rather than go to the gallows.

And although there is some dispute about its authenticity, Dr. Lattimer also had in his collection what is said to be Napoleon’s penis, which a long tradition holds was removed by the priest who administered the last rites. Dr. Lattimer bought it at an auction in 1969. Asked about its authenticity, his daughter said: “Of course, the French don’t want it here. But there’s ironclad provenance.”

John Kingsley Lattimer was born in Mount Clemens, Mich., on Oct. 14, 1914, the only child of Irvie and Gladys Lenfesty Lattimer. His family moved to New York when he was 2.

Besides his daughter, of Kansas City, Mo., Dr. Lattimer is survived by his wife of 59 years, the former Jamie Hill; two sons, Jon, of Kona, Hawaii, and D. Gary Lattimer, of Honolulu; and one grandson.

A lanky 6-foot-4, Dr. Lattimer was a track star at Columbia University, from which he graduated in 1935. He won eight metropolitan area Amateur Athletic Union hurdling championships. He graduated from the College of Physicians and Surgeons at Columbia in 1938.

Among Dr. Lattimer’s most prized possessions was a sword that belonged to Ethan Allen, who in the predawn hours of May 10, 1775, led a band of Green Mountain Boys in capturing strategic Fort Ticonderoga, on Lake Champlain in upstate New York — a turning point in the Revolution. Two hundred years later to the hour, Dr. Lattimer — Ethan Allen’s sword in hand — led a re-enactment of that battle.

For several years in the 1980s, Dr. Lattimer was chairman of the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Medieval Festival, held outside the Cloisters in Fort Tryon Park in Manhattan. At the 1983 festival, clad in armor and bearing a shield, he told a reporter about his fascination with medieval armaments.

“In my front hall, I have a suit of armor from a Knight of Malta, with the Maltese Cross,” he said. “I also have a beheading ax.”

Edited May 13, 2007 by Douglas Caddy

[David G. Healy]

Editing correction to subtitle to topic -- should read: Chosen by Kennedys to examine autopsy evidence.

John K. Lattimer, Urologist of Varied Expertise, Dies at 92

By DENNIS HEVESI

The New York Times

May 13, 2007

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/13/nyregion...amp;oref=slogin

John K. Lattimer, a prominent urologist, ballistics expert and collector of historical relics who treated top-ranking Nazis during the Nuremberg war crimes trials and was the first nongovernmental medical specialist allowed to examine the evidence in President John F. Kennedy’s assassination, died Thursday at a hospice near his home in Englewood, N.J. He was 92.

His death was announced by his daughter Evan Lattimer.

For 25 years, Dr. Lattimer was a professor and chairman of the urology department at the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Columbia University.

Dr. Lattimer was credited with helping to establish pediatric urology as a discipline, developing a cure for renal tuberculosis, writing 375 scientific papers and representing the United States at the World Health Organization.

His interests, however, spanned an array of fields. His 30-room, 1895 Federal-style home in Englewood was a virtual military museum until his collection went into storage last year. Its third floor was lined with medieval armor, Revolutionary and Civil War rifles and swords, a pile of cannonballs, World War II machine guns and German Lugers, and drawings by Adolf Hitler.

Dr. Lattimer had been fascinated by weapons since his childhood visits to his grandparents’ farm in Hubbardston, Mich., where he spent summer days hunting. That interest took a more serious turn during World War II, when he treated hundreds of casualties as an Army doctor during the Normandy invasion.

He became a ballistics expert and, after the killing of President Kennedy, a student of assassinations. In his collection was a blood-stained collar that President Lincoln wore to Ford’s Theater the night he was shot.

Dr. Lattimer wrote several articles in medical journals describing experiments he had conducted with rifles, scopes and ammunition similar to those used by President Kennedy’s assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald. Then, in 1972, the Kennedy family chose Dr. Lattimer to be the first nongovernmental expert to examine 65 X-rays, color photos and black-and-white negatives taken during the autopsy.

A front-page New York Times article, with a photograph of Dr. Lattimer, quoted him saying that the images “eliminate any doubt completely” about the validity of the Warren Commission’s conclusion that Oswald fired all the shots that struck the president.

Dr. Lattimer’s wartime experiences also prompted him to write a somewhat controversial book based, in large part, on his assignment to the medical team at the Nuremberg trials. The book, “Hitler’s Fatal Sickness and Other Secrets of the Nazi Leaders” (Hippocrene Books, 1999), records his professional impressions of the men and their conditions.

It includes a long chapter concluding that Hitler suffered from advanced Parkinson’s disease — probably the “faster moving post-encephalitic” type, Dr. Lattimer wrote — based on reports of Hitler’s tremors, first in the left hand, then spreading to other limbs, and his well-documented attacks of rage.

Dr. Lattimer theorized that the disease prompted him to make bizarre judgments that eventually cost Germany the war. Among the more macabre relics that Dr. Lattimer collected, in this case from his service at Nuremberg, is a glass ampoule that contained the dose of cyanide taken by Hermann Göring, the Luftwaffe commander, to commit suicide rather than go to the gallows.

And although there is some dispute about its authenticity, Dr. Lattimer also had in his collection what is said to be Napoleon’s penis, which a long tradition holds was removed by the priest who administered the last rites. Dr. Lattimer bought it at an auction in 1969. Asked about its authenticity, his daughter said: “Of course, the French don’t want it here. But there’s ironclad provenance.”

John Kingsley Lattimer was born in Mount Clemens, Mich., on Oct. 14, 1914, the only child of Irvie and Gladys Lenfesty Lattimer. His family moved to New York when he was 2.

Besides his daughter, of Kansas City, Mo., Dr. Lattimer is survived by his wife of 59 years, the former Jamie Hill; two sons, Jon, of Kona, Hawaii, and D. Gary Lattimer, of Honolulu; and one grandson.

A lanky 6-foot-4, Dr. Lattimer was a track star at Columbia University, from which he graduated in 1935. He won eight metropolitan area Amateur Athletic Union hurdling championships. He graduated from the College of Physicians and Surgeons at Columbia in 1938.

Among Dr. Lattimer’s most prized possessions was a sword that belonged to Ethan Allen, who in the predawn hours of May 10, 1775, led a band of Green Mountain Boys in capturing strategic Fort Ticonderoga, on Lake Champlain in upstate New York — a turning point in the Revolution. Two hundred years later to the hour, Dr. Lattimer — Ethan Allen’s sword in hand — led a re-enactment of that battle.

For several years in the 1980s, Dr. Lattimer was chairman of the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Medieval Festival, held outside the Cloisters in Fort Tryon Park in Manhattan. At the 1983 festival, clad in armor and bearing a shield, he told a reporter about his fascination with medieval armaments.

“In my front hall, I have a suit of armor from a Knight of Malta, with the Maltese Cross,” he said. “I also have a beheading ax.”

How did he finance his military collection

[Nathaniel Heidenheimer]

And also how did he finance his humble penis collection?

I guess everyone needs a hobby!

[Pat Speer]

I recently watched a film about the Nuremberg trials, and was suspicious that the official story--that Goring pulled the ampule from his own possessions, was bs. Now I'm even more suspicious that Lattimer GAVE it to him, and was a Nazi sympathizer. Why else would he have spent so much of his life trying to prove that that dirty little commie was the sole killed of Kennedy???? Hmmm..