doctorzebra.com
Open in
urlscan Pro
104.198.14.52
Public Scan
Submitted URL: http://www.doctorzebra.com//prez//g20.htm
Effective URL: https://doctorzebra.com/prez/g20
Submission: On August 07 via api from US — Scanned from DE
Effective URL: https://doctorzebra.com/prez/g20
Submission: On August 07 via api from US — Scanned from DE
Form analysis
0 forms found in the DOMText Content
← ↑ → ← ↑ → Doctor Zebra > Presidential Health > George WashingtonJohn AdamsThomas JeffersonJames MadisonJames MonroeJohn Q. AdamsAndrew JacksonMartin van BurenWilliam HarrisonJohn TylerJames PolkZachary TaylorMillard FillmoreFranklin PierceJames BuchananAbraham LincolnAndrew JohnsonUlysses GrantRutherford HayesJames GarfieldChester ArthurGrover ClevelandBenjamin HarrisonGrover ClevelandWilliam McKinleyTheodore RooseveltWilliam TaftWoodrow WilsonWarren HardingCalvin CoolidgeHerbert HooverFranklin RooseveltHarry TrumanDwight EisenhowerJohn KennedyLyndon JohnsonRichard NixonGerald FordJames CarterRonald ReaganGeorge BushWilliam ClintonGeorge W. BushBarack ObamaDonald TrumpJoseph Biden HEALTH AND MEDICAL HISTORY OF PRESIDENT JAMES GARFIELD President #20: 1881-1881 Lived 1831-1881 Buy da shirt! Buy da shirt! HEALTH AND MEDICAL HISTORY OF PRESIDENT JAMES GARFIELD President #20: 1881-1881 Lived 1831-1881 ↓ Lived 1831-1881 2023 1776 Revolutionary War 1776-1783 War of 1812 1812-1815 Mexican-American War 1846-1848 Civil War 1861-1865 Spanish-American War 1898-1899 World War 1 1917-1918 World War 2 1941-1945 Korean War 1950-1953 Viet Nam War 1964-1975 Desert Storm 1990-1991 Bush's Wars 2001-2021 UNDER CONSTRUCTION Maladies & Conditions · writing · "ague" · bad cold · anal fissure · "weak stomach" · height & weight · assassination · rectal feeding · abdominal cramping · foot pain · infarct · malpractice Odds & Ends · Doctors · Resources · Cited Sources Maladies and Conditions writing Could simultaneously write Greek with one hand and Latin with the other. 1a "ague" For six weeks when he was 15, Garfield drove horses along the narrow towpaths running beside the Ohio canal network. After falling into the water for literally the 14th time, Garfield developed fever, chills, exhaustion, and became bedridden for weeks. This illness was diagnosed as an "ague," which was then a term applied generically to any malaria-like illness. He was treated with large doses of calomel, a chloride of mercury with cathartic properties. At that time it was the standard treatment for any fever. 2 bad cold Garfield had a bad cold in 1851 that was treated by a homeopathic practitioner, Alpheus Morrill, with "cold cloths applied to the chest and infinitesimal doses of medicine." 2 anal fissure Garfield developed a painful anal fissure in 1875 that kept him in bed for several weeks. Ultimately, Dr. John Shaw Billings (later the Surgeon General of the US Army, and the architect of the Johns Hopkins Hospital) operated on him. 2 "weak stomach" Garfield had a "weak stomach" for years. 2 height & weight "Garfield was elected president at age 49. He was six feet in height and weighed 185 pounds, and was characterized as 'very strong, atheletic and energetic." 2 assassination On July 2, 1881, Charles J. Guiteau fired two bullets from his Bulldog .44 at Garfield. One caused a superficial arm wound. The other entered in the right posterior thorax, fractured rib 11, traveled leftward and anteriorly into the L1 vertebral body, then lodged about 2.5 inches to the left of the spine, below the inferior border of the pancreas. 3 (President Garfield's spine is held by the National Museum of Health and Medicine. It was on display in 2000, and apparently shows the path of the bullet 4.) 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 rectal feeding For some period after the shooting, Garfield was fed rectally 1c. Comment: It would be interesting to know if this was an innovation at the time and whether, due to absorptive peculiarities of the rectum, this could have led to a deficiency state of any kind. abdominal cramping After the shooting, Garfield was treated with high maintenance doses of quinine (5 to 10 grains per day) and morphine (one-fourth grain daily), frequent sips of brandy, and a single dose of calomel. Garfield had chronic abdominal symptoms during his convalescence. They were ascribed to the calomel by one of the homeopathic practitioners attending him. 2 MORE foot pain Pendel 5a heard this from a White House steward, Mr. Crump, hours after Garfield died: > 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. infarct Garfield died 80 days after being shot. The cause of death has usually been described as either: (1) rupture of a splenic artery aneurysm, or (2) pyemia. In fact, his death was probably due to ischemic heart disease. 1d MORE malpractice At his trial, the assassin Guiteau admitted shooting the President, but denied killing him. Instead, he claimed that Garfield's physicians killed him. Although Guiteau was executed because his defense was not strong enough, he was probably correct. 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: 1. It seems reasonable to suppose that Garfield had anemia of chronic disease, which would have lowered the ischemic threshold. 2. Chronic infection could have led to amyloidosis. If it affected the heart, then it is not surprising that an ischemic event would have been so rapidly fatal. 3. It is becoming increasingly clear that coronary atherosclerosis is an inflammatory, perhaps infectious, disease. It is possible that Garfield's chronic inflammation and infection could have accelerated atherosclerosis. Odds and Ends * Both Garfield and his wife were particularly sympathetic to homeopathy. His first cousin, and boyhood neighbor, Silas Boynton, was a homeopathic practitioner. In 1875 Garfield asked Boynton to consult with the physicians caring for his dying mother-in-law. In 1881, while living in the White House, Garfield's wife Lucretia developed malaria, and Boynton was summoned again. Boynton recommended that Mrs. Garfield, who was severely ill, be transferred to the New Jersey seashore, away from the malarious swamps that reached the backyard of the White House. During Garfield's final illness, Boynton and another homeopath (Susan Edson) attended Garfield, but as nurses. 2 * "Some people say that prayer has saved the President. They may think so. In my opinion it was whiskey." Dr. -- D. W. Bliss, physician caring for Garfield after the shooting 6a. (Interestingly, Grant's physician once said just the opposite.) * Dr. Bliss later died of sepsis (blood poisoning), contracted when he cut his hand while dressing one of Garfield's wounds. 1e [But the Roos article says he died in 1889...] * Garfield's medical bill was $18,500. 1d Doctors Before Presidency * Jedediah Hyde Baxter * John Shaw Billings During Presidency * Jedediah Hyde Baxter Assassination * Smith Townshend * Charles Burleigh Purvis Shooting (First Day) * Doctor Willard Bliss * Smith Townshend * Nathan Smith Lincoln * Basil Norris * Philip Skinner Wales * John Brown Hamilton * Charles Mason Ford * DeWitt Clinton Patterson * Charles Burleigh Purvis * Robert Reyburn * Joseph Janvier Woodward * Susan Ann Edson * Joseph K. Barnes * Seth R. Beckwith * William James Chamberlain Du Hamel * Francis M. Gunnell * David Low Huntington * Joel Pomerene Shooting (in Washington) * Doctor Willard Bliss * Joseph K. Barnes * Robert Reyburn * Joseph Janvier Woodward * David Hayes Agnew * John H. Girdner * Frank Hastings Hamilton * Silas A. Boynton * Susan Ann Edson Shooting (in New Jersey) * Doctor Willard Bliss * Joseph K. Barnes * David Hayes Agnew * Frank Hastings Hamilton * Silas A. Boynton * George Frederick Shrady Post-mortem * Joseph K. Barnes * Joseph Janvier Woodward * Robert Reyburn * Daniel Smith Lamb * Andrew H. Smith * Frank Hastings Hamilton * David Hayes Agnew * Silas A. Boynton Resources Ampres Series Rutkow 40 reviews Millard 1576 reviews Kansas Series Doenecke 4 reviews Signature Series Taylor 0 reviews Cited Sources 1. Brooks, Stewart M. Our Murdered Presidents: The Medical Story. New York: Frederick Fell, 1966. a p.56 b p.89 c p.85 d p.?? e p.125 Comment: LCC shelving code R703 B873 1966. 2. Deppisch, LM. Homeopathic medicine and presidential health: homeopathic influences upon two Ohio presidents. Pharos. Fall 1997;60:5-10. Pubmed: 9385827. 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." 3. Drawing by Duncan Winter. 4. Reif, Wanda. Medical curiosities in cabinets. Out of the blue cabinets. Exhibition at the National Museum of Health and Medicine Washington, DC, USA, showing until May 21, 2000. (Review). Lancet. 2000;355:1467. 5. Pendel, Thomas F. Thirty-Six Years in the White House. Washington: Neale Publishing Company, 1902. 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:: 6. Boller, Paul F. Jr. Presidential Anecdotes. New York: Oxford University Press, 1981. a p.171 Other Sources Pubmed Search (30 matches when checked in March 2013) -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- George Washington · John Adams · Thomas Jefferson · James Madison · James Monroe · John Q. Adams · Andrew Jackson · Martin van Buren · William Harrison · John Tyler · James Polk · Zachary Taylor · Millard Fillmore · Franklin Pierce · James Buchanan · Abraham Lincoln · Andrew Johnson · Ulysses Grant · Rutherford Hayes · James Garfield · Chester Arthur · Grover Cleveland · Benjamin Harrison · Grover Cleveland · William McKinley · Theodore Roosevelt · William Taft · Woodrow Wilson · Warren Harding · Calvin Coolidge · Herbert Hoover · Franklin Roosevelt · Harry Truman · Dwight Eisenhower · John Kennedy · Lyndon Johnson · Richard Nixon · Gerald Ford · James Carter · Ronald Reagan · George Bush · William Clinton · George W. Bush · Barack Obama · Donald Trump · Joseph Biden