History with the Cap'n- Doctor Assisted Assassination

History has more rich and interesting stories than any one class can do justice. In your typical high school level U.S. History class, you have so many facts to digest in only a year of study that you have no hope of learning anything that might actually interest you. History class fails to engage most students because their teachers don't have the time to explore any thing of meaning or relevance to the students in any degree of depth. Just to demonstrate how intriguing and informative history can become when studied in detail, I like breaking down particular items down to the most obscure and surprising facets. Almost always I find we can learn something from nearly anything recorded in the annals of history.

For today's entry we will take a deeper look at the assassination of a U.S. President. Before I start bulleting out my points, I'd like you to reflect on how much you can actually recall about presidential assassinations in American history. If you find yourself drawing mostly a blank, don't feel bad because you are far from alone. With many surveys revealing how little Americans know about their history, I wouldn't be surprised if a majority of Americans couldn't name all four presidents who were assassinated. Yet when you consider that we are talking about the leader of the nation being violently murdered, it seems odd that we don't discuss them more beyond all those crazed JFK conspiracy theories. So let's leave behind the well remembered and often mourned Presidents Lincoln and Kennedy, and instead turn our attention to President James A. Garfield and his untimely death.

• I'll get the basic facts out of the way first. James A. Garfield had won a close election on a platform of reforming government. In his first 119 days in office he took bold steps to strengthen the national government and end corrupt practices, such as filling high government offices with unqualified political supporters. Unfortunately on his 120th day as POTUS a mentally unstable man named Charles Guiteau shot Garfield at a railway station in Washington D.C, as the president was about to leave town on vacation. Guiteau had repeatedly requested, but never received, a diplomatic position from Garfield -possibly because Guiteau had no diplomatic or political experience to speak of- and he felt wronged by the president. After the shooting doctors rushed to aid the president, and that's where the story starts to get really interesting . . .

• The first doctor to tend to the president tried to give him some on the spot medication, a combination of brandy and liquid ammonia. Garfield, as you might expect, vomited. I can't say for sure whether the doctor took that as a good sign or a bad sign. I only knew that it did nothing to discourage the rest of the president's caretakers from continuing to perform some very bad medicine.

• Doctors focused their efforts on trying to locate and remove the bullet lodged into the president's body. Surgeon D. Willard Bliss offered the services of his "Nelaton Probe" to trace the path of the missile through Garfield's flesh. When jabbing the probe into the president's innards and wriggling it around for a few minutes failed to produce the slug, Dr. Bliss resorted to sticking his finger into the wound. Another doctor would later try inserting his hand into the wound up to his wrist, apparently working under the belief that Bliss just hadn't done enough damage. Eventually the area where the doctors had probed and fingered and fisted would become infected. Naturally they took this as evidence that the bullet must still be in that area.

• Eventually scientific expert Alexander Graham Bell offered the services of his new invention, a rudimentary metal detector (The Cap'n told you he'd come back to this). The device used Bell's telephone technology in combination with a simple electrical system that caused a hum when pointed near metal. When Bell scanned Garfield with the metal detector they heard a hum where the doctors thought the bullet lie. So the medical men launched into a new series of surgeries by the end transforming a three-inch bullet wound into a twenty-inch tunnel of infected tissue.

• In the end Garfield succumbed 80 days after being shot. Medical historians believe infections caused his death (and caused him a lot of pain along the way). Ultimately the bullet Guiteau had fired into the president failed in its intended purpose to kill the leader of the nation. An autopsy would find the bullet lodged ten inches away from the doctors' invasive tinkering, sealed by Garfield's body in a protective cyst. Fittingly the doctors became the subject of public scorn and ridicule for their apparent malpractice. Dr. Bliss would later apologize, but the damage had been done.

• When the assassin faced trial, Guiteau tried to defend himself by claiming that he was not responsible for killing the president. "The doctors did that," he said "I simply shot at him." Not surprisingly the jury saw things otherwise, and he was hanged for his crimes. He may have been better off letting his attorney use the insanity defense (still a new concept at the time), instead of trying to defend himself by saying he had "divine authority" to shoot the country's leader.
  

• Dr. Bliss holds the unenviable distinction of being the only doctor involved with two presidential assassinations (he was also on hand, as the head of a Washington D.C. area, hospital after Booth shot Lincoln). However one person has been involved with three of the four presidential assassination: Robert Todd Lincoln. Robert Lincoln was the son of Abraham Lincoln and the president's wife Mary Todd. He was invited to join Abe and Mary at Ford's Theater but declined as he was too tired. He went on to serve as Garfield's Secretary of War, and accepted Garfield's invitation to meet at the train station when Guiteau attacked. Year later President William McKinley would invite Robert Lincoln to the Pan-American Exposition of 1901. Lincoln came, and yet again a president was shot and killed. Though Robert Lincoln would live another 25 years after McKinley's assassination he apparently was never invited to another presidential event (perhaps wisely so).

• The untimely death of Garfield did have some unexpectedly pleasant consequences. His vice-president, Chester A. Arthur, had to take on the presidency. Political bosses had put Arthur on the ticket to sooth concerns among corrupt party members that Garfield would reform them all out of a job. They thought Arthur, as an old-line party member in good standing, would make sure the political toadies still got their piece of the pie. When he took office, many feared Arthur would undo Garfield's reforms and go about politics as usual. However Arthur would defy those pessimistic expectations, and take great steps to change long standing political processes. He pushed legislation that would ensure government positions wouldn't go to political lackeys unless they could prove they at least met the minimum qualifications- a standard America still proudly holds its appointed officials to today.

If we look over the details of just this one incident from American history we can find plenty of important lessons. From the failings of the doctors we can see that even well-meaning experts can make grave mistakes when not armed with the right information. From the examples of Alexander Graham Bell and Chester A. Arthur we can support the old adage that past performance is no indicator of future success. From the story of Guiteau we can learn that no matter what heinous acts people do they can almost always defend their actions, if only to themselves. Overall we can tell that there are plenty of dangerous things out there besides the bullets of an assassin, a thought-provoking lesson as many worry about assassination today. Even Garfield himself said that "Assassination can no more be guarded against than death by lightning; and it is best not to worry about either." These may not necessarily be lessons unique to this moment in history, but the evidence they present toward any lesson has value. Certainly at least enough value to warrant more than just a passing mention in an over-stuffed history class.

History with the Cap'n- Ring my Bell

Historians love studying the unique individual. The unusual and complex person who stands out from the crowd and lives an exceptional life certainly helps keep the history books interesting. In fact some have argued that unique individuals are the only thing worth studying in history. Unfortunately the more outstanding the individual the more likely he or she is to be a little to complex to easily categorize. One person who nicely exemplifies this was born 162 years ago tomorrow on March 3rd, 1847 CE, Alexander Graham Bell. Undoubtedly Bell had an incredible mind and he certainly did some amazing work in his life. Unfortunately, most people know Bell as the inventor of the telephone, an accomplishment for which he almost certainly received too much credit. Like his friend Thomas Edison, history should probably celebrate Alexander Graham Bell as a multifaceted genius who significantly helped advance the fields of technology in several ways. Yet, again like Edison, the popular imagination remembers him only as an inventor of a modern convenience. So, once again, the Cap'n will help out all you history buffs, by debunking some myths and revealing some truths about Alexander Graham Bell.

• First, let's address the whole issue of who invented the telephone and when. According to a resolution of the U.S. Congress, the U.S. House of Representatives acknowledges Antonio Meucci for his work in the invention of the telephone. Meucci has a strong claim to fathering the telephone. He was a poor, struggling Italian immigrant who could have legally prevented Bell from patenting his telephone if he only had enough money to cover the proper fees. Meucci sued Bell over who had the proper legal claim to the invention. Attempting to prove his complaint Meucci sent his working models to the labs at Western Union. In what can only be described as the opposite of serendipity for Meucci, he sent his models to the very same lab where Bell worked. The models would later mysteriously disappear, sort of in the same way that the grass would mysteriously stay green. Critics of Meucci have derided his claims. They argue his design would not function if tested and appeared to defy the basic physics involved with telecommunications. Even if you dismiss Meucci, Elisha Gray can challenge Bell as father of the telephone. Gray had designed an apparatus which appears to have been technologically superior to Bell's. He went to the patent office to legally stake his claim the field of telephone technology, but would actually miss out because Bell had patented his telephone mere hours before. Gray sued Bell, who probably spent as much time litigating as he did inventing. The courts would name Bell the inventor of the telephone, but who wants to win like that.
  

• Truthfully, the question of who invented the telephone is at best a nebulous issue with only debatable answers. Many people had worked on devices similar to Bell's invention. Bell simply had the luck to land the legal rights, the dedication to make the phone a practical tool, and the business sense to envision the telephone as a commercially viable item. In fact Bell was so confident in the telephone's chances of success, he boldly predicted that in the future there would be at least one telephone in every city in the U.S.

• Bell had a life long interest in communication, which probably led him to experiment with telephone technology in the first place. He devised a very rudimentary telecommunications system as a child. He trained his dog to say the words (or at least a close approximation) "How are you, grandmama?" so he could greet his grandmother from a different room in the house. I haven't found any record of how his grandmother reacted to having a dog bound up and talk to her, but I just hope both she and the dog survived the first incident.
  

• As I mentioned above, Bell was what you could call a polymath. He had a brilliant mind and he took an interest in a great variety of intellectual and scientific pursuits. He had an interest in aeronautics, so he designed a kite that could carry a person. He wanted to tinker with mechanical propulsion and he helped invent a hydrofoil that would set the world-water speed record at the time. He valued geography education and as president of the National Geographic Society, he encouraged the creation of the National Geographic Magazine. His constant improvements to the telephone established the basis for the phonograph and communicating with light rays. As an amateur geneticist, he tried to breed an especially prolific line of sheep and succeeding in producing sheep with superfluous nipples (okay, so that one didn't work out so well). He even created an early metal detector that completely failed to save the life of . . . actually, I'll save that item for a later entry.
  

• Of all the things Bell did with his life beyond the phone, he took the most pride in the work he did for the deaf. Both his wife and mother were deaf. Even before he patented his telephone he opened a school for the deaf. Eventually he founded a society for the deaf that still exists today and now bears his name. He worked closely with Helen Keller and she even dedicated her autobiography to him. Bell dedicated a large part of his life to an segment of his population that at the time had no use for his most famous creation. Now almost no one hears about this side of him. Maybe that sad irony is just the karmic scales balancing out the good fortune he had in his work on the telephone.
  

• The fame and accolades lauded onto Bell for supposedly inventing the telephone put him in a special class of hero. Though few people would ever learn of his other work he stands alone as the only person to be named one of the 100 greatest Britons, Americans, and Canadians of all time. Few other people rose to such a level of success that multiple nations would compete for the right to claim them as natives.

The Era of Big Nicknames is Over

As your standard news junkie, I have kept checking into all the various presidential firsts that we've experienced since Barack Obama assumed the office. We all could have a lively debate about the merits of any of our new president's actions, or the efficacy of any of his varied public appearances and televised speeches. Thankfully, for our comment moderator (the Cap'n) we don't have to worry about that here. In part, because plenty of other sites already exist for exactly that purpose. Mostly though because I won't even mention anything political in this post.

With most of the reaction to President Obama's remarks focusing quite rightly on what effects his plans will have on the ongoing economic crisis, a minor point that signaled the President's efforts to shift the culture of Washington went by unnoticed. Given that Obama's promises to bring a new attitude to national politics made up the heart of his campaign before the recession really hit this fall, I thought someone ought to mention how the tone coming out of the White House changed in a subtle but possibly significant way. President Obama has established a business-like and solemn tone he uses when speaking with the press, when interacting with them from behind the Seal of the President for the first time, he made the choice -rather pointedly in my opinion- to address everyone by their full and proper names. With this he put an end to the George W. Bush Era of Nicknames.

During Bush-43's tenure in office theories abounded about why the Commander-in-Chief seemed to treat everyone with the casual familiarity of a fraternity brother. Some seemed to believe that it only represented the natural inclination of people to show friendliness and camaraderie. In a way, President Bush only wanted to invite the press corps into his circle of friends. It certainly seemed as though he would have appreciated more chums in the media toward the end of his term. Other looked for deeper psychological meanings to the President's practice. Some thought he wanted to rename people and things (like the "Axis of Evil") as a way of demonstrating his power and dominion over them. Keep in mind that many cultures believe that renaming anything changes it on a spiritual level, a power usually reserved to gods. Drawing from that interpretation some even implied that Bush issued his new designations not just to assure himself of his own authority, but to see who would acquiesce to the new titles he bestowed. In a smartly written essay playwright/screenwriter David Mamet, describes the sorrowful consequences for any who surrender to a nickname:

The assignment of nicknames, the application of jargon is an understood tool for the manipulation of behavior. We know the quote "charismatic" boss who is making up "cute" and idiosyncratic names for his or her employees. "I alone know and I alone will assign you your name." This is a powerful (and impolite) tool. It is an arrogation of power and a useful diagnostic. For those who grin and tilt their heads to have their ears rubbed at the new name have surrendered their personality to the oppressor; they have given up their soul.

While I greatly doubt that every member of George W. Bush's cabinet felt as though a nickname cost them their soul, Mamet does illuminate the fact that nicknaming is a social act, meant to include those knowledgeable of the appellation and exclude those ignorant of its meaning. Regardless of his motivations, President Bush drew attention to his habit of gregariously distributing nicknames by jumping right into them from the very beginning of his presidency.

Conversely Obam began his presidency in a much more formal manner. If you check the transcript, you won't find any instances of Obama referring to anyone with a jovial moniker. At only one point does he even come close when he refers to Vice-President Biden, as Joe. To me this nicely demonstrates how Obama's attitude differs from his predecessor. He doesn't feel opposed to having nicknames; he just feels they should result from a relationship that's had time to define itself, more cognomens than nicknames really. President Obama has only begun his time in office and he seems willing to let the relationship he has with the press mature before labeling the reporters that will make up a major part of his life. I think he does this in the hopes that they will grant him sometime to define his presidency before branding him in the press.

So far Obama's tactic appears effective. His approval ratings remain high as the government continues to wrestle with the enormous problems of the day. Moreover he does seem set on changing the culture of Washington and continuing to do things differently than his predecessor, with the use of proper names only a small part of this strategy. What's next? Ending controversial practices? Taking questions from opponents? Attending an NBA game? With President Obama, all we can say for certain is that it is a new era.