"I don't think it was mysticism, I think that was him knowing what his body was telling him," Sotos said. "Then if you're a historian, I think you have to say ... how does that affect how you run the war, your clemency toward soldiers who may have deserted their post, the way you reconcile with the South?"

One problem with his theory, which he acknowledges: People with MEN-2B normally die young, and Lincoln was 56 when he was shot. And the malady is only one of several ascribed to Lincoln; researchers in the 1960s suggested another genetic disorder, Marfan syndrome, to explain his height, and others say his clumsy gait could have been due to spinocerebellar ataxia.

Tests have been done on the remains of presidents to settle controversies, most famously for evidence on whether Thomas Jefferson fathered children of his slave, Sally Hemings, and to rule out arsenic poisoning in the death of Zachary Taylor.

Other museums, however, have declined to do DNA tests on Lincoln artifacts.

Grove points out that while such material could shed light on history or answer claims of descent, it could also lead to commercialization, perhaps through sales of jewelry or other items embedded with famous DNA.

And while it may be hard to say what Lincoln would have wanted, the opinion of his surviving son seems clear. After repeated moves of Lincoln's remains, as well as an 1876 plot to rob Lincoln's grave, Robert Lincoln had his father's remains interred underground in 1901 in a steel cage encased in concrete in Springfield, Ill., where they remain.

"There," Grove said, "we probably have the closest thing of someone saying, from the family point of view, 'Hey, let's not do this.'"

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