in the hours, though, just shortly after lincoln is shot, the surgeon general, surgeon general joseph barnes, responds to the president's side. this is at the peterson's house directly across the street from ford's theater. barnes calls for something called a probe and when he founted that in the back here on display. the idea with the probe was that it would be threaded into the wound with the idea that depending on how far into the wound the probe would go might identify where the fragment or bullet was. they weren't able to do so. the bullet they found later ended up being lodged behind lincoln's right eye. but the probe was retained and eventually made its way into the museum's holdings and is part of the exhibit we have here on display. surgeon general barnes and army medical museum staff john woodward and another surgeon named edward curtis were at the president's bedside in the hours before he died, which was about 7:22 the next morning, the 15th of april, 1865. it was decided then that a postmortem would be performed very quickly and the president's body was removed to the white hous