Destiny of the Republic - By Candice Millard Page 0,101

deep incision down to and slightly past Garfield’s twelfth rib, following what he believed to be the track of the bullet, but which was, in fact, a long, vertical cavity that had been created by the doctors’ own fingers and instruments, and filled with infection. Before closing the incision, Agnew inserted two drainage tubes, which, Bliss noted with satisfaction, quickly issued “a profuse discharge of pus and bloody serum.” Garfield, Bliss recalled with astonishment, endured the procedure “without an anæsthetic, and without a murmur, or a muscular contraction.”

Neither the incisions the surgeons made, however, nor even the drainage tubes they inserted could keep up with the copious amounts of pus Garfield’s body was producing. Just two weeks after the surgery, another abscess formed, this one on Garfield’s right parotid gland, the largest salivary gland, which lies between the mouth and ear. Within days, the abscess had become so filled with pus that it caused his eye and cheek to swell and paralyzed his face. Finally, it ruptured, flooding Garfield’s ear canal and mouth with so much pus, mixed with thick, ropy saliva, that it nearly drowned him.

So toxic was the infection in Garfield’s body that it was a danger even to those who were treating him. One morning, while dressing the president’s wound, Bliss reached for a knife that was partially hidden under some sheets. Unable to see the blade, he accidentally sliced open the middle finger of his right hand. “It is thought that some pus from the President’s wound penetrated the cut,” the New York Times reported the next day, “and produced what is known as pus fever.” The resulting infection caused Bliss’s hand to become so painfully swollen that he had to carry it in a sling.

Before his hand had even had a chance to fully heal, Bliss gave an interview in which he proclaimed that there was no evidence of blood infection in the president. “Not the minutest symptom of pyæmia has appeared thus far in the President’s case,” he told a reporter. “The wound,” he said, “is healthier and healing rapidly.… In a word, the wound is in a state that causes us no apprehension whatever.”

What did cause Bliss apprehension was the very real possibility that the president might die—not from infection, but starvation. In less than two months, Garfield had lost more than a third of his body weight, plunging from 210 pounds to 130. The barrel-chested, broad-shouldered former soldier who had taken office just five months earlier, radiating health and vitality, was now a near skeleton, so weak he could hardly hold a pen. The president, one of his doctors privately told a reporter, had reached “the limit of what a man can lose and yet live.”

Not only did Garfield continue to suffer from violent bouts of vomiting, but he had long since lost any interest in eating. Edson, Lucretia’s doctor who had agreed to serve as a nurse so that she could watch over the president, had told the New York Herald earlier in the month that, “at the best meal he has had lately, after the couple of mouthfuls he would ask to have it removed.” Most days, Garfield was able to keep down a little bit of oatmeal. Unfortunately, that happened to be the one food he despised.

Although Garfield found it difficult to eat anything, for a while at least he seemed to relish drinking a glass of milk. He dutifully swallowed the koumiss, a drink made from fermented horse milk, that Bliss gave him nearly every day, but he strongly preferred cow’s milk. Eager to help in any way, Americans latched onto this small piece of information. So that the president might have the freshest possible milk, a company in Baltimore sent him an Alderney cow, which could be seen tied up on the White House lawn. The White House cook, who was the only Catholic among the staff, poured a large glass of milk for Garfield every day. Just before she carried his tray up the winding servant stairs to his sickroom, she quietly sprinkled holy water into his glass.

Realizing that he urgently needed to find a way to feed the president, Bliss came up with an alternative to food: “enemata,” or rectal feeding. He mixed together beef bouillon—predigested with hydrochloric acid—warmed milk, egg yolk, and a little bit of opium, to help with retention. The solution, which, if absorbed, would provide protein, fatty acids, and saline, was injected into the president rectally every four hours, night and