{"id":1526,"date":"2006-07-26T11:40:00","date_gmt":"2006-07-26T18:40:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cahighways.org\/wordpress\/?p=1526"},"modified":"2006-07-26T11:40:00","modified_gmt":"2006-07-26T18:40:00","slug":"what-killed-the-president","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cahighways.org\/wordpress\/?p=1526","title":{"rendered":"What Killed The President?"},"content":{"rendered":"

The New York Times has an interesting article today on the assassination of the president<\/a>. Specifically, the assassination of President Garfield<\/a>. Garfield was waiting at the Baltimore and Potomac Railroad Station in Washington, about to leave for New England, when he was shot twice by the assassin, Charles J. Guiteau. The first bullet grazed Garfield\u2019s arm. The second struck him in the right side of the back and lodged deep in the body. Without the benefit of modern diagnostics, Garfield\u2019s doctors could not determine the location of the bullet. At least a dozen medical experts probed the president\u2019s wound, often with unsterilized metal instruments or bare hands, as was common at the time. One man suggested that they turn the president upside down and see if the bullet would just fall out. The president\u2019s fluctuating medical condition became a national obsession in the summer of 1881. Alexander Graham Bell built a crude metal detector composed of a battery and several metal coils positioned on a wooden platform and was connected to an earpiece to search for the bullet. His doctors issued daily medical briefings, which were rapidly disseminated by telegraph and published in newspapers across the country.<\/p>\n

Garfield\u2019s doctors, believing that the bullet might have pierced his intestines, strictly limited his solid food intake. They insisted that Garfield be fed rectally, and he received beef bouillon, egg yolks, milk, whiskey and drops of opium in this manner. Garfield lost over 100 pounds from July to September.<\/p>\n

The doctors publically disagreed on his treatment. While the head physician, Dr. Bliss (an alliopath) released optimistic reports to the press, his rivals, including Dr. Silas Boynton (a homeopath) leaked negative \u2014 and ultimately more truthful \u2014 information. Medical journals also published scathing editorials criticizing the president\u2019s care.<\/p>\n

In the end, Garfield died after lingering for 80 days. At the autopsy, it became evident that the bullet had pierced Garfield\u2019s vertebra but missed his spinal cord. The bullet had not struck any major organs, arteries or veins, and had come to rest in adipose tissue on the left side of the president\u2019s back, just below the pancreas. In today\u2019s world, he would have gone home in a matter or two or three days. In the world of the 1880s, it was the poor medical care that did him in.<\/p>\n

So, even with all the ills of the medical system today, I’m glad I don’t live in the 1880s.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The New York Times has an interesting article today on the assassination of the president. Specifically, the assassination of President Garfield. Garfield was waiting at the Baltimore and Potomac Railroad Station in Washington, about to leave for New England, when he was shot twice by the assassin, Charles J. Guiteau. The first bullet grazed Garfield\u2019s Read More …<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[117,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1526","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-history","category-lj-xfer"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cahighways.org\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1526","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cahighways.org\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cahighways.org\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cahighways.org\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cahighways.org\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1526"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/cahighways.org\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1526\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cahighways.org\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1526"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cahighways.org\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1526"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cahighways.org\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1526"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}