Health and Medical History of President
James GarfieldHealth and Medical History of President
James GarfieldUNDER CONSTRUCTION |
The whereabouts of this second bullet was a mystery until the autopsy, despite even the efforts of Alexander Graham Bell. Bell used his newly invented "induction balance," better known now as a metal detector, to attempt locating the bullet. 1b
He was always so cheerful and had so much nerve. Why, he used to astonish me with his jokes, even while he was suffering horribly. Suffer? I should say he did. The first week or ten days it was his feet. He kept saying, "Oh, my God! my feet feel as though there were millions of needles being run through them." I used to squeeze his feet and toes in both my hands, as hard as I possibly could, and that seemed the only relief he could get.Comment: This presumably relates to a post-shooting time. It is difficullt to know what to make of this symptom. It doesn't sound like gout (squeezing would be excruciating). Vascular or neurological causes seem most likely.
Garfield's original wound was 3.5 inches long, and ended with the bullet lodged in a harmless part of the abdomen. The wound was probed by the fingers of numerous physicians during the rest of Garfield's life so that, by the time of his death, the wound track was 20 inches long and oozing pus.
It seems reasonable that the terminal event in Garfield's life was a myocardial infarction. However, the wound could have contributed to the terminal event in three ways, all of them derived from the fact that Garfield was mightily infected for a period of 3 months:
a p.56 b p.89 c p.85 d p.?? e p.125
Comment: LCC shelving code R703 B873 1966. |
Comment: Discusses the relationships of Garfield and Harding with homeopathy. Also reprints a Currier & Ives drawing of "The Death of General James A. Garfield, Twentieth President of the United States." |
a pp.115-116
Comment: Pendel was door-keeper at the White House from the time of Lincoln to the time of Theodore Roosevelt. Full text is available on-line at loc.gov. It is a rather dry book, and reads as if it were written by an old man. http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/D?lhbcbbib:1:./temp/~~ammem_rEou:: |
a p.171
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