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.