It's Official. "Coffin-Boy" Had Congenital Heart Disease

The "boy in the iron coffin," the body of a young man found two years ago by utility workers in Washington D.C, has been identified - and his cause of death determined.

The 15-year-old was William Taylor White, a prep-school student from Accomack,Virginia, whose body was apparently forgotten when the cemetery in which he was buried was later moved. Researchers from the Smithsonian have spent the past two years identifying White, and examining his remains for clues as to why he died in 1852.

It turns out White had a ventricular septal defect (VSD) - a hole in the part of the heart muscle that separates the right and left ventricles. While VSD remains one of the more common types of congenital heart disease, with modern surgical therapy it has become very unusual for anyone to die from this condition, at least in the United States. In fact, most who have VSDs can count on leading entirely normal lives.

So, with modern therapy White would have survived to become the perfect age and social standing (his family was descended from Jamestown settlers and wealthy enough to supply a well-sealed iron coffin), to have been commissioned an officer in the Army of Northern Virginia nine years later. What this might have led to is anyone's guess, but let no one say that modern American medicine is impotent to change the very course of history.

You can read more about the detective work that identified "coffin-boy" here.