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The assassin shot the president 2 bullets, but doctors killed him

The assassin's bullets did not kill US President James Garfield, and he might even have survived the injury if his doctors had not insisted on repeatedly infecting his wounds and pushing a feeding tube into his rectum. What the hell happened there?

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• medical history

• Assassination

• Political assassination

Strider Schleider Putschnik

Friday, 07 May 2021, 07:06 Updated: 07:25

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One bullet in the shoulder, one bullet in the abdomen, and hallucinatory medical treatment.

Illustration depicting the assassination scene of James Garfield by Charles Ghetto (Photo: ShutterStock)

During the trial of Charles Ghetto, for the assassination of the 20th U.S. President James Garfield, the defendant said: “I admit I served the President.

Although it was the doctors who murdered him. "Although Ghetto was convicted of murdering President Garfield (and sentenced to death by hanging for him), there was something in his words, given the strange details included in his medical treatment, the president" won "the 79 days between assassination and returning his soul to the Creator.

President James A. Garfield was shot on July 2, 1881, at 9:30 a.m., while standing and waiting for a train to pick him up from Baltimore and Potomac stations in Washington, D.C., just four months after taking office, interrupted by the first bullet fired from Ghetto - which scratched him in the shoulder, and especially from the second ball, which was already better aimed, hit the president's lower back and got stuck in the abdomen.

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Many doctors felt compelled to help treat the wounded president, one of the first to arrive at the scene was Dr. Dr. Willard Bliss (this is not a typo - his first name was Doctor. , And perhaps a pity), who later became the chief physician who led Garfield's treatment until his death. By the way, Dr. Bliss was also quoted as saying "if I can not save him, no one can."

It is possible that he would have survived the assassination, the medical treatment he did not survive.

The 20th President of the United States James A. Garfield (Photo: ShutterStock)

Although Dr. Bliss was agile and one of the first doctors to offer treatment to the president, he was not necessarily the best or most appropriate doctor, and many questions later arose about his treatment methods. Many of them began with the words: "What the hell ..?!". The

doctors who came the scene of the assassination of the first to try first to remove the bullet stuck in the belly of the President using a method known and commonly used at that time: the insertion of fingers unclean into the wound and probing inside a blind search for another bullet. spoiler: it did not work.

later, the President turns to the white house, there continued to doctors in efforts to rescue The bullet - this time by probing inside the gunshot wound with the help of non-disinfected medical devices that have joined their unwashed hands.

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However, Garfield's death was not yet a complete fact at this point, there is a certain chance that he would have miraculously survived the injury and even his rescue attempts, if only the doctors around him had adhered to the best medicine known at the time.

In this context it is important to note that awareness of the importance of sterility has already existed in those years, for some time.

Joseph Lister, who was a pioneer in the field of disinfection, published his theories and demonstrated the benefits of sterile medicine for nearly two decades.

Unfortunately for Garfield, doctors in Europe were more willing to adopt Lister's conclusions than doctors in the United States. In those days only a handful of American doctors maintained hygiene that prevented terrible infections from their patients, and Dr. Bliss was not one of them.

Another delusional treatment method.

Alexander Graham Bell and his aide try to locate the bullet in the president's abdomen with the help of electricity (Photo: ShutterStock)

Bliss and his colleagues continued to try to get the bullet out of Garfield's gaze over and over again during the 9 weeks they treated him, intensifying the infection in his body. In addition, Garfield was given very high doses of morphine to relieve his pain as well as quinine - because doctors mistakenly diagnosed his infection symptoms as malaria. Following this drug treatment the president was unable to eat or drink without vomiting, prompting Dr. Bliss to start looking for alternative ways of feeding. This was the stage where he came up with the idea of ​​feeding the unfortunate president through the rectum.

The unfortunate president has spent the last 3 months of his life subject to the determined attempts of his doctors to feed him through the rectum.

First, Bliss tried to feed the president with the help of egg yolks inserted into his rectum (mixed with whiskey beef extract, for some reason).

However, he decided to stop and try something else, after the patient responded to this nourishment with particularly bad-smelling swellings.

The second rectal feeding attempt involved cow blood, which led to "abnormal discharge" (apparently decay of cow blood in the presidential rectum).

The right recipe for rectal feeding

Finally, the dubious medical staff agreed on a compound that did not cause the president to emit disgusting odors (arguably the lowest medical standard in existence, then and in general), and contained: "Freshly finely chopped beef, cold water, a few drops of hydrochloric acid and a pinch of salt. This should be left for an hour to an hour and a quarter and then transferred to a fine sieve, and the residue should be rinsed with a little cold water, while squeezing the mixture to remove all soluble substances.The liquid obtained at the end of the process will contain soluble components ".

At one point rectal feeding became a CIA torture method.

Press release depicting President Garfield's death (Photo: ShutterStock)

The matter of rectal feeding was quite popular at the time, although it is now known that it is a very inefficient way of feeding patients calories or fluids.

Later this procedure was condemned by many doctors, after it became known that the US Secret Service CIA had used it as a means of torturing suspects under the pretext of "feeding".

Its complications can cause food debris to rot in the rectum and sagging internal organs.

The Ghetto assassin was not wrong.

What ultimately killed President Garfield were the infections he suffered as a result of the unhygienic surgical procedures he underwent by Dr. Bliss and the other physicians who treated him, as well as their rectal feeding attempts. To harsh criticism, which completely shattered their reputation.at least that.

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