Date: 28 July 2013
Location: Bob & Linda
The full title of this month’s book was Destiny of the Republic: A Tale of Madness, Medicine and the Murder of a President by Candice Millard. The meeting was at our house with the usual good discussion, good food and some wonderful homemade ice cream provided by my next door neighbor, Lynn.
Until I read this book I knew very little about James A. Garfield except that he was assassinated shortly after he was elected. But this is not just a biography of Garfield; it is a window into the American life and politics at that time and that is why I enjoyed the book so much.
Only seventeen years after the assassination of Lincoln traumatized the nation, Charles Guiteau shot President Garfield. The wound was survivable — indeed, many Civil War veterans sustained similar wounds and lived normal lives. However, his doctor, the controlling and pompous Doctor Bliss, was not willing to practice Lister’s antisepsis techniques, which were still ignored by many of the older entrenched American medical community. The dirty finger and unwashed probes inserted into Garfield’s wound in search of a bullet sealed the president’s fate, infecting the injury and leading to his death.
While Garfield was slowly dying, Alexander Graham Bell worked feverishly to develop a metal detector to try to locate the bullet still in Garfield’s body.
I think we all enjoyed the book and would recommend it
— Linda F.