EVERY SPOKEN WORD
35 min read · 7,499 words- 0:00 – 1:00
Garfield’s unlikely beginnings and the idea that education can be “salvation”
- DSDavid Senra
At just 44 years of age, he had already defied all odds. Born into extreme poverty in a log cabin in rural Ohio, and fatherless before his second birthday, he had risen quickly through the layers of society, not with aggression or even ambition, but with a passionate love of learning that would define his life. Garfield was a former professor of ancient languages, literature, and mathematics, who had paid for his first year of college by working as a janitor. Garfield's interests and abilities were as deep as they were broad. In fact, so detailed was his interest in mathematics that he had recently written an original proof that the New England Journal of Education had published just a month before. The journal was astonished that a member of Congress had written it. In Garfield's experience, education was salvation. It had freed him from grinding poverty. It had shaped his mind, forged paths, and created opportunities where once there had been none. So that is an excerpt from the book that I want to talk to you about today, which is
- 1:00 – 1:30
Why this book: Candice Millard’s story and what the host didn’t know about Garfield
- DSDavid Senra
Destiny of the Republic: A Tale of Madness, Medicine, and the Murder of a President, and it was written by Candice Millard. Candice Millard is one of my favorite authors. Uh, she wrote this book called A River of Doubt, which I covered all the way back on episode 175. It's about Theodore Roosevelt. It's a biography of Theodore Roosevelt. And then she also wrote a biography of the first, I think, 25 or 26 years of Winston Churchill's life. It's called Hero of the Empire, and that is episode 319. And so before picking up this book, and I picked it up because Candice wrote it, I did not
- 1:30 – 5:03
A self-made life and the medical tragedy at the center of the story
- DSDavid Senra
know much about James Garfield. He was the 20th president of the United States. He was only president for 199 days before he was assassinated. So the book is about the, his early life, the assassination, and then the fact that he would have survived if he had access to modern medicine. So there's this other guy in the book that's a, that plays a prominent role. He's a guy named Joseph Lister. He's the one that w- went arou- across the world trying to educate doctors that you need to wash your hands, that you're actually infecting, that infection, you're putting your dirty, um, unsterilized, um, uh, eq- the, the equipment they use to maybe operate on, uh, your patients, that is what's actually, you're inducing infection, that's what actually is killing the people. This is exactly what happened, uh, to James Garfield. But what was more remarkable, again, I didn't know much about him before I picked up the book, so I'm just gonna give you a brief overview of his life before I jump back into the book. It is incredible. Uh, so it says, "He was one of the most remarkable self-made figures in American presidential history. He was born into poverty in a log cabin in Ohio. He became a teacher, a college president, a Civil War general, a congressman, and eventually president." And wait till we get to the part, he becomes president against his will. He did not want to run for president. He was called to lead. Um, he was born into extreme pove- poverty. He educated himself out of that poverty. Uh, th- there's also another, um, what I think is one of the most fascinating parts of the story, is that it says, "Garfield's rise was extraordinary even before he became president. He went from working as a school janitor to leading the very institution where he had studied, then became a general and a national political leader. His death also raises a remarkable historical question. Would Garfield have survived if his doctors had understood modern infection control?" Which, of course, uh, by the end of the book, that becomes obvious. But I wanted to, to talk about that, 'cause this is what jumps out. Obviously, uh, you and I talk about a lot of these, uh, characters that are in these stories that are in these biographies, is the fact that education was salvation. Uh, Steve Jobs said early in his career that he thought books saved his life. You would hear that over and over again. Uh, but I want to read this part to you again. "In Garfield's experience, education was salvation. It had freed him from grinding poverty. It had shaped his mind, forged paths, and created opportunities where once there had been none." So one of the most remarkable parts of the book is there's a bunch of direct quotes from Garfield's own writing, because for 28 years, he sat down every night and essentially recounted his day and his thoughts in his diary. And so as a result of the fact that he wrote in his diary and in his journal for 28 years, we get all these great quotes, uh, from things that he wrote. And in this quote, he's describing somebody else, but this is a g- great example of you can't take the boy out of the man. "I never meet a ragged boy in the street without feeling that I may owe him a salute, for I know not what possibilities may be buttoned up under his coat." And so, uh, I've heard Jay-Z say something one time that I r- uh, really liked, and he was talking about, you know, he's already really successful, and at that point he was, was running a record label, and he talked about the fact that, you know, he goes, "There's somebody out there. There's somebody at the table right now, sitting at, uh, eating cereal, looking at the box of cer- uh, back of cereal box, and they're writing rhymes, and they want my spot." And then Jay-Z says something that's really interesting. He goes, "I'm gonna find him, and I'm gonna sign him. I don't want any trouble." And so what he's talking about is he's like, "I know that's the case because I, 10, 15, 20 years, I was that person." And so when I read this, this is what I really think. He's just like, he was a ragged boy in the street. And just like James Garfield says, "I owe him a salute," because I do- I know not what possibilities may be buttoned up under his coat into his future. There's no way Garfield could have predicted when he was a young man being born in poverty into a, a log cabin that his life would turn out the way it
- 5:03 – 6:33
Childhood hardship, dignity, and refusing to romanticize poverty
- DSDavid Senra
did. And so let's go into his early life. It says, "James Garfield's father died just a few months after his 33rd birthday. He would die in a log cabin that he had built four years earlier. It consisted of one room, three small windows, and a rough wooden plank floor. The gaps between the logs were filled with clay in a futile attempt to shut out the brutal Ohio winters. His father's death left his mother, Eliza, with four children to feed. Their youngest son, James, was not yet two years old." And then we see an example of just how great a writer Candice Millard is. "There would come a time when the story of James Garfield's early life would be widely admired. His extraordinary rise from fatherlessness and abject poverty would make him the embodiment of the American dream. Garfield refused to romanticize his childhood. He said, 'Let us never praise poverty.' Garfield was raised in desperate circumstances. His mother, left with debts she could not hope to pay after her husband's death, was forced to sell much of their land. What was left, she farmed herself with the help of her oldest son, James' 11-year-old brother, Thomas." James did not have a pair of shoes until he was four years old. Although Garfield understood clearly that he was poor, he had inherited from his mother an innate dignity. And listen to what he says to his mother as a young boy when he asks to go to school. Again, so there was something that he just understood, that education, the o- um, I have to learn my way out of this. "If I ever get through a course of study, I don't expect anyone will ask me what kind of coat
- 6:33 – 8:34
Leaving home at 16: canal work, near-drowning, malaria, and a turning point
- DSDavid Senra
I wore when studying. And if they do, I shall not be ashamed to tell them it was a ragged one." And so he doesn't think he can go to college. He has to support himself. He has to work, so he leaves home at 16 years old, and he becomes a canal man. Uh, it's a very, essentially you're driving, uh, boats on a canal, and this describes the people he was working with. Uh, "He had the lowliest position among a group of rough and violent men." And so they're on cold bodies of water, and when he's a very young man, he's still a teenager, he falls into the water and almost drowns, and then contracts malaria and almost dies. So he returns home after his near-drowning a changed man, but also a very sick one. He had contracted malaria on the canal, and by the time he reached his family's log cabin, he could barely walk. For two months, he was bedridden and no one would know if he would survive. Since James had been gone, his mother and older brother had managed to save $17, and they hoped that he would use it to go to school. "I took the money," Garfield wrote, "as well as the advice." Before we get back into this, I want to tell you about the presenting sponsor of this podcast, Ramp. I have been reading a lot about SpaceX lately. SpaceX is one of the most valuable businesses in the world, and one of the main themes in the history of SpaceX is constantly attacking and questioning your cost. Ramp helps many of the most innovative businesses in the world do exactly that, and they do this by using first principles thinking. The median company running on Ramp cuts their expenses by 5%. And one thing that SpaceX has demonstrated is that a religious dedication to controlling your cost helps increase revenue because you can pursue opportunities you couldn't otherwise, and we see that in the Ramp data, too. The median company running on Ramp also grows their revenue by 16%. So when you're running your business on Ramp and your competitors are not, you have a massive competitive advantage that compounds over time. Ramp is the only platform designed to make your finance team faster and happier. Many of the top founders and CEOs that I know run their business on Ramp. I run my business on Ramp, and you should, too. Go to ramp.com today
- 8:34 – 10:34
From janitor to standout student: relentless work and ambition in his diary
- DSDavid Senra
to learn how they can help your business save time, save money, and grow revenue. That is ramp.com. This is the changing point of his life. It reminds me, have you ever seen the, the movie Good Will Hunting? It reminds me of Will Hunting. Garfield had transformed from a rough canal man into a passionate and determined student. Unable to afford tuition, he convinced the school to allow him to work as a janitor in exchange for his education. He swept floors, hauled wood, and made fires, and he never tried to hide his poverty from his fellow students. As he walked to the tower every morning, having left the first lecture of the day early so he could ring the school's enormous bell, his tread was firm and free, he wrote. Garfield quickly realized that he was an extraordinary talented student, and the more he learned, the more ambitious he became. And he's just a fantastic writer. He says the, uh, he, he's writing this again to, in his diary, "The ice is broken. I am resolved to make a mark in the world. There is some of the slumbering thunder in my soul, and it shall come out." His day began at 5:00 AM, and it concluded unabated with studying, classes, work, and more studying until just before midnight. No one worked harder, and if they came close, Garfield took it as a personal challenge. Direct quote from Garfield, "If at any time I began to flag in my effort to master a subject, I was stimulated to further effort by the thought that some other fellow in the class will probably master it." As determined as Garfield was to outpace his fellow students, his fiercest competition was with himself. He had a great desire and settled purpose to conquer, to master all lessons, to prove superior to every difficulty, to excel all competitors, and to conquer and surpass himself. So vigorously did Garfield apply himself during the first year that by the second year, the school had promoted him from janitor to assistant professor. Now do you see what I mean? Like, uh, uh, I'm, I'm somewhat embarrassed I didn't know. He, he's the, he's the 20th president of the United States, and I had no idea of this remarkable, this is one of the most remarkable lives ever lived, and the fact that it was cut short by this coward and psycho, which
- 10:34 – 12:05
Williams College to college president by 26, then politics and war redirect his life
- DSDavid Senra
again is a huge part of the book, is so, it's just unbelievably sad. Goes from janitor to assistant professor in a year. Along with the subjects he was taking as a student, he was given a full roster of classes to teach, including literature, mathematics, and ancient languages. And then eventually he does so well at the smaller school, he gets to go to a better school. So in eigh- uh, 1854, Garfield was accepted to Williams College, where the competition was greater than he had ever experienced, and this stirred in him an even fiercer ambition. The direct quote from Garfield, "There is a high standard of scholarship here and very many excellent scholars, those that have had far better advantages and more thorough training than I have," he wrote to a friend. "I have been endeavoring to calculate their dimensions and power, and I have determined that out of 42 members of my class, 37 shall stand behind me within two months." You ready for this? This is crazy. By the time he was 26, he was that school's president. That is incredible. But then two things ended Garfield's academic career, politics and war. When an Ohio state senator died unexpectedly in 1859, Garfield was asked to take his place in an upcoming election. Two months later, he won the election by a wide margin, quietly beginning a career that in the end would lead him to the White House. A year after Garfield entered politics, the country was plunged into civil war. Garfield was anxious to join the battlefield. He was made a lieutenant colonel in the Union Army. Soon after, at 30
- 12:05 – 14:06
Civil War command: an audacious Kentucky strategy, fame, and the cost of killing
- DSDavid Senra
years of age, he was promoted to colonel. At this point, Abraham Lincoln is still alive. Abraham Lincoln famously said, "I hope to have God on my side, but I must have Kentucky." So Garfield's actually sent to win Kentucky for the Union Army. Although he was hopelessly inexperienced, outmanned, and outgunned, Garfield accepted the assignment. After he received his orders, he worked through the night hunched over a map of Eastern Kentucky. By morning, he was ready to set out. Garfield created a military strategy that some would call brilliant and others would call audacious. His idea was to do this. He divided his already small regiment into three even smaller groups. The plan was to attack the rebels from three different sides, thus giving the impression of a regiment that was much larger and better equipped than his. Incredibly, Marshall, who's the person, the, the general he's fighting, believed everything Garfield wanted him to and more. When Garfield's first attachment attacked the Confederates, as expected, they confidently rushed to meet them. Then a second force fell upon the rebels from a different direction, throwing them into disarray and confusion. Just as they were beginning to figure out how to fight on two fronts, Garfield attacked on a third. Convinced that a mighty army had surrounded him, Marshall ordered his men to retreat, leaving Kentucky solidly in Union hands. This battle made Garfield famous and resulted in his swift promotion to brigadier general. When the fighting had ended and when his gamble had paid off, Garfield learned the truth about war. Stepping into a clearing, he saw what at first he took to be soldiers sleeping. He would never forget how they looked. The impression of peace and tranquility had, that had formed in his mind was replaced by the sickening realization that the young men before him were not resting, but dead. It was in that moment, Garfield would later tell a friend, that something went out of him that never came back, the sense of the sacredness of life and the impossibility of destroying it. As painful as it was for Garfield to witness the death of his young soldiers, he remained firmly committed
- 14:06 – 16:06
Congress, Lincoln’s request, and a leader who refuses to chase power
- DSDavid Senra
to the war, determined that it would end in Confederate defeat. He wrote, quote, "By thundering volley must this rebellion be met, and by such means alone." Garfield was an ardent abolitionist. 10 months after this battle, Garfield was elected to the US Congress. Garfield would not take his congressional seat until more than a year later when Abraham Lincoln asked him to. Up until that point, he refused to leave the battlefield. He wrote, "I have resigned my place in the army and have taken my seat in Congress. The president told me he dared not risk a single vote in the House, and he needed men in Congress who were practically acquainted with the wants of the army. I did not feel a right to consult my own preference in such a case." And then the book goes into detail about all these different causes that Garfield would fight for, and I wanna read you the section, though, because I, I do think there's an element to, you know, some of the best leaders are the ones who don't wanna lead. They are compelled by others to lead, and that is definitely the case for Garfield. Inexplicably, it seemed that the only cause for which Garfield would not fight was his own political future. In an early adopted eccentricity that would become for him a central law of life, he refused to seek an appointment or promotion of any kind. "I suppose I am morbidly sensitive about any reference to my own achievements," he admitted. And then this is gonna give us a preview into the fact that he did not want to become president. And again, him becoming president against his will causes him to lose his life 199 days after he was inaugurated. When it came to the presidency, Garfield simply looked the other way. He had spent 17 years in Congress, and he saw men whose desperate desire for the White House ruined their careers, their character, and their lives. "I have so long and so often seen the evil effects of the presidential fever upon my associates and friends that I am determined it shall not seize me," he wrote. "In almost every case, it impairs, if it does not destroy, the usefulness of its victim." And so every chapter starts with a quote written by Garfield, and this is one of my favorite ones. It says, "Quiet is no
- 16:06 – 18:07
Nominated against his will: the convention turns a speech for Sherman into ‘We want Garfield’
- DSDavid Senra
certain pledge of permanence and safety. Trees may flourish and flowers may bloom upon the quiet mountainside, while silently the trickling raindrops are filling the deep cavern behind its rocky barriers, which, by and by, in a single moment, shall hurl to wild ruin its treacherous peace." And that is the quote that begins the chapter where he goes to the convention hoping to elect a nominee for his party and gives a speech so compelling that the crowd decides that he should be the nominee. And so at the end of the speech, something happens that Garfield does not want to happen. Garfield asked a simple question, "And now, gentlemen of the convention, what do we want?" From the midst of the crowd came an unexpected, and for Garfield, unwelcome answer. "We want Garfield." What starts out as just one person saying something starts to build on itself, build on itself, build on itself, and then his friend comes to him. A concerned friend spoke to Garfield in confidence. "General, they are talking about nominating you." Garfield [laughs] replied, "My God, I know it, I know it, and they will ruin me." He said simply, "I'm going to vote for Sherman, and I will be loyal to him. My name must not be used." He was giving a speech trying to nominate Sherman, and he was so good at it and had such a profound way of speaking and leading that the convention starts to ditch Sherman and every single other nominee and, against his will, start to vote for Garfield. And this goes over several pages, and you see stuff like this, and you hear things like this from Garfield. "The announcement contains votes for me. No man has a right without the consent of the person voted for to announce that person's name and vote for him. Such consent I have not given." A few pages later, he could not stop what was happening. The last state was called, and Garfield was left with 399 votes, 20 more than was needed to win. Having never agreed to become even a candidate, on the contrary, having vigorously resisted it, he was suddenly the nominee. A friend comes up to him and says, "General, we congratulate you." Garfield replied, "I am very sorry that this has become necessary." And
- 18:07 – 22:40
Campaigning reluctantly and dreading the presidency’s losses: books, farm, and loneliness
- DSDavid Senra
then just another banger line from his journal Theologians in all ages have looked out admiringly upon the material universe and demonstrated the power, wisdom, and goodness of God, but we know of no one who has demonstrated the same attributes from the history of the human race. And so then the book goes into the story of this presidential contest that Garfield is now against his will engaged in. Another line from his journal at the beginning of this chapter, "This honor comes to me unsought. I have never had the presidential fever, not even for a day." And so he almost, somewhat refuses to go out and campaign. Some reporters go to his house, it's a very modest house, and they notice, again, something I admire most about him is the fact that he said, "Hey, I was born into a very bad position. There's only one way out, and that is through the salvation of education." So he's a voracious reader. Garfield's books filled every room. You can go nowhere in the general's home without coming face to face with books. And when he wasn't reading, he liked to cultivate his land. Happily left to his own devices, Garfield poured his time and energy into his farm. He worked in the fields, planting, hoeing, and harvesting crops. He said, "I long for time to study agricultural chemistry and make experiments with soils and forces." This goes back to the idea that some of the greatest leaders are the ones that are compelled to lead. They do not, they did not seek their positions for the sake of themselves. Garfield could not shake the feeling that the presidency would bring him only loneliness and sorrow as he watched everything he treasured, his time with his children, his books, and his farm abruptly disappear. He understood that the life he had known was gone. The presidency seemed to him not a great accomplishment, but, quote, "A bleak mountain that he was obliged to ascend." Sitting down at his desk in a rare moment to himself, he tried to explain in a letter to a friend the strange sense of loss he had felt since the election, and this is what he wrote, "There is a tone of sadness running through this triumph which I can hardly explain." And then another great line about those on the margins often come to control the center, "To a young man who has in himself the magnificent possibilities of life, it is not fitting that he should be permanently commanded. He should be a commander." And so this is what he writes to himself the day before he's going to be inaugurated. He says, "Tonight I am a private citizen. Tomorrow I should be called to assume new responsibilities, and on the day after, the broad side of the world's wrath will strike. It will strike hard. I know it, and you will know it." And before we get back into this, I want to tell you about AppLovin. One of my all-time favorite quotes is from the book Zero to One. 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Automate your compliance, security, and trust with Vanta. Vanta will help you win trust, close deals, and stay secure faster and with less effort. Go to vanta.com/founders and you'll get $1,000 off. That is vanta.com/founders. And so a huge part of the book before he's shot is just you have this, what I feel
- 22:40 – 25:11
Inside the White House: office seekers, political battles, and a man who won’t hold grudges
- DSDavid Senra
is like a truly good man in this unbelievably corrosive, almost like evil environment, one that he did not seek, one that he did not want. And so it's just a bunch of descriptions of him dealing with this environment and the, the new responsibilities that, that come with being the President of the United States, obviously. And I think there's just, like, some descriptions that give you and I a- an indication of, like, what kind of person he was. So it says, "He never rose to the bait, nor was Garfield capable of carrying a grudge, a character trait that neither Conkling nor Blaine could begin to understand." So these are some of the people that he's having, you know, these, these battles with and that were, were trying essentially to, to work against him. Uh, Garfield said, "I'm a poor hater," he shrugged. What Conkling did not understand, however, was that while Garfield was a poor hater, he was a very good fighter. He had never before walked away from a fight, and he was not about to do so now. And so Garfield writes, "Of course I detest war, but if it is brought to my door, the bringer will find me at home." His days are now filled with people asking for favors, seeking office. He's having to play politics. What he really wanted to do was actually sit in the Library of Congress and read. And so when he-- Remember he was in Congress, I think, for 17 years before he was president, and there's this great description of Garfield by the librarian of the Library of Congress, who knew Garfield well and said he would rank him among the most diligent researchers he had ever met. There's also a bunch of lines from Garfield Being excessively worried about the damage that him being president could do to himself and his family, he writes, "Whatever fate may await me, I am resolved, if possible, to save my children from being injured by my presidency." For Garfield, who treasured time not just to work, but to read and think, the situation was untenable. "My God," he wrote after a day spent wrestling with office seekers, "what is there in this place that a man should ever want to get into it?" So voracious were the people who prowled the halls of the White House searching for a job that they sounded like nothing more than, quote, "beasts at feeding time. These people would take my very brains, flesh, and blood if they could." And so one of the most remarkable things about this time in history that's very different from the world that you and I live in is the fact that, you know, you could just walk into the White House and say, "I need an appointment with the president." And if you waited long enough, sometimes you'd wait all day and he wouldn't get to you, but in many cases, he would just talk to you. And this is what he's talking about, these office seekers. And then there's no such thing as, th- there's no presidential protection. You know, this is after Lincoln was assassinated. They don't even have presidential
- 25:11 – 27:12
Premonitions, lack of protection, and the shadow of assassination
- DSDavid Senra
protection even after Garfield was assassh- assassinated too. And so he's walking around Washington, DC all the time, and s- and his would-be assassin winds up, you know, following him for many, many times, at church and on walks with other people in his cabinet, and, you know, essentially just, like, w- would follow him around, uh, the city. And so people were obviously fearful of this because multiple presidents had been shot, and Garfield wrote this: "Assassination can be no more guarded against than death by lightning, and it is best not to worry about it either." But in many cases, he did worry about it, so there's something that he shares in common with Lincoln, who they both had premonitions of an early death. In fact, Garfield's Secretary of War was Abraham Lincoln's oldest and only surviving son, and he told this story to Garfield that his father had a prophetic dream be- shortly before his assassination. And it says, "After he'd fallen asleep one night, Abraham Lincoln had a dream in which there was a deathlike stillness about me," he said. Within the stillness, however, he could hear subdued sobs. Leaving his room, he searched the White House for the source of the weeping, but every room he entered was empty. Finally, stepping into the East Room, he saw a coffin that was guarded by soldiers. "Who is dead in the White House?" he asked. "Why, don't you know?" one of the soldiers replied. The president had been assassinated. Lincoln had believed deeply in dreams, seeing in them omens that he dared not ignore. And we see Garfield had premonitions about this as well. His own death was often on Garfield's mind. Although he was by nature cheerful and optimistic man, he had long felt that he would die an early death. When his friends tried to talk him out of this grim conviction, his only answer was that the thought seemed to him as foolish as it does to you. Nonetheless, he could not shake it. "I do not know why it haunts me," he said. "I feel it so strong upon me that the vision is in the form of a warning that I cannot treat lightly." And so then before you and I get to where Garfield is shot, I need to go back in the book and introduce a character named Joseph Lister. Candice does
- 27:12 – 29:14
Joseph Lister’s antisepsis vs. American skepticism—and the doctors who will treat Garfield
- DSDavid Senra
a great job of weaving Garfield's story with his assassin, with Joseph Lister, and with Alexander Graham Bell, and how they're all related around this assassination of James Garfield. And so at the time where Alexander Graham Bell is inventing the telephone, says wh- while Bell's technological innovation caught fire in an instant of understanding, Joseph Lister's discovery, one of the most important advances in medical history, was dismissed. Lister was British. It says, "The British surgeon struggled to convince his audience, a collection of the most experienced and admired physicians and surgeons in the United States, of the critical importance of antisepsis, preventing infection by destroying germs. Almost none of them seriously considered putting his theory into practice. At this time, many well-respected scientists still scoffed at the idea of germs. Lister's time-consuming and complicated system for destroying them seemed ridiculous. Lister, however, knew that the difference between his method and the old method was the difference between life and death. Although the results were dramatic, the death rate among Lister's surgical patients immediately plummeted, antisepsis had provoked reactions of deep skepticism and even fury. Lister had been forced repeatedly to defend his theory against attacks from enraged doctors. 'The whole theory of antisepsis is not only absurd,' one surgeon seethed, 'it is a positive injury.' Another charged that Lister's methods would be a return to the darkest days of ancient surgery. Most American doctors simply shrugged off Lister's findings, uninterested and unimpressed." And this is why, the dangers that Lister described could not be seen by the naked eye, and many of the doctors in the audience did not believe that they existed. And in a cruel twist of fate, as Lister is giving this lecture, it says, "Seated in the audience listening to Lister was Dr. Frank Hamilton, a highly regarded surgeon who would one day quite literally hold James Garfield's fate in his hands. Hamilton preferred to use methods that were quite different from antisepsis. Among them was the open air treatment in which no dressings whatsoever are employed
- 29:14 – 32:46
The shooting and the treatment that turns survivable injury into lethal infection
- DSDavid Senra
and the wound is left open. Lister tried in vain to persuade men like Hamilton that without antisepsis they risk killing their patients." And so with that background, we get to the point where Garfield is shot. The injury he had sustained from the gun was not fatal. The second bullet had entered his back. It had broken two of Garfield's ribs and grazed an artery, but it had missed his spinal cord and, more important, his vital organs. Just five minutes after the shooting, they, they called the doctor, this guy named Dr. Smith Townsend. What Townsend did next was something that Joseph Lister, despite years of traveling the world, proving the source of infection and pleading with physicians to sterilize their hands and instruments, had been unable to prevent. As the president, he gets shot in a train station. So first of all, they, they don't, they, they leave him on the train station floor. As the president lay on the train station floor, one of the most germ-infested environments imaginable, Townsend inserted an unsterilized finger Into the wound in his back, causing a small hemorrhage and almost certainly inducing an infection that was far more lethal than the bullet. And it is this infection that 79, I think it's 79 days later, is actually going to kill Garfield. We're going to go into some of the detail here. Now they call him to another doctor. This guy named Bliss. Bliss had very little respect for Joseph Lister's theories on infection and even less interest in following his complicated methods for antisepsis. With nothing to even ease the pain, Garfield lay silent as Bliss searched for the bullet inside him, pressing the unsterilized probe downward and forward into the wound. Bliss did not stop until he had reached a cavity three inches deep in Garfield's back. At this point, he decided to remove the probe, but found that he could not. In attempting to withdraw the probe, it became engaged between the fractured fragments of the end of the rib. So, okay, hold on. There's nothing for pain. The wound is open. You have dirty fingers being stuck in this. Unsterilized probes going back and forth against broken ribs where it would have been obvious if this happened today where the bullet was. Once the wound is sealed, you could even leave the bullet in there. He would not have died from this. He finally had to press down on Garfield's fractured rib so that it would lift and release the probe. His unsterilized probe got stuck in there. Could you imagine the pain that this guy is in? Bliss immediately, oh my goodness. Although the probe was finally out, Garfield had no respite. Bliss immediately began to explore the wound again, this time with the little finger on his left hand. He inserted his finger so deeply into the wound that he could feel the broken rib. And so not only is his death going to be induced by the very people that were supposed to care for him, he knows he's dying. He has many weeks. And this is one of the most devastating parts of the book when he's talking to his wife, who again will not accept that fate. And so he's looking at it not through his, the life of, like his eyes through his own life. He's looking at it through the eyes of his children. The memory of his own fatherless childhood weighed heavily on his mind. And he tried to talk to her about plans for their children if he were to die. She said firmly, please do not speak again of death. And then the fact that in different parts of the world, Lister's ideas were not only already known, but accepted. And so as this continues on and this infection starts to spread, the chapter that goes into that detail, we have another line from Garfield's journal early in his life. And it's just devastating because it winds up being true for him. Great
- 32:46 – 35:48
Slow-traveling medical ideas, the tragedy of timing, and Garfield’s final days
- DSDavid Senra
ideas travel slowly and for a time noiselessly as the gods whose feet were shod with wool. And then this is the point I was trying to make earlier. The fact that you just like the wrong time in history, just a few years later and Garfield would have survived. He could have still been president. He could have survived long enough to see his kids grow up. Had Garfield been shot 15 years later, the bullet in his back would have been quickly found by x-ray images, which didn't exist at the time. And the wound treated with antiseptic surgery. He might have been back on his feet within weeks. Had he been able to receive modern medical care today, he likely would have spent no more than a few nights in the hospital. This is devastating. Even had Garfield simply been left alone, he almost certainly would have survived. Lodged as it was in the fatty tissue below and behind his pancreas, the bullet itself was no continuing danger to the president. Nature did all she could to restore him to health, a surgeon would write just a few years later. She caused a capsule of thick, strong, fibrous tissue to be formed around the bullet, completely walling it off from the rest of the body and rendering it entirely harmless. And then what's devastating about this, it goes again to the idea that it's like, this is complete malpractice and mistakes on the doctor's part. They knew, first of all, sticking the finger in there and the instruments, okay? They rejected Lister's ideas. But they knew that you didn't have, they kept doing it because they thought they wanted to remove the bullet. But this is after the Civil War and the author makes a great point. It's just like, but this was already known. There's tons of people walking around America with bullets still in them. Let me read this paragraph to you. Garfield's doctors did not know where the bullet was, but they did know that it was not necessarily fatal. Just 16 years after the end of the Civil War, hundreds of men were walking around with lead balls inside of them. Many of the soldiers had sustained wounds that seemed almost impossible to survive. For the better part of his life, the man who delivered Garfield's assassin to jail had a bullet in his brain, a wound also sustained during the Civil War. And he appeared to be none the worse for it. The critical difference between these anonymous men and Garfield was that they had received little, if any, medical care. Instead, Garfield was the object of intense medical interest from a group of physicians, each with their own theories and ambitions and each acutely aware that he was treating the President of the United States. And so then we get to the final days of Garfield's life. Garfield had no illusions about his chance of survival. When asked if he knew that he might not live, he had replied simply, oh yes, I have always been conscious of that. What worried him now was not his own death, but the suffering it would bring to those he loved most. The last letter he would write was to his mother in the hope that he could bolster her spirits, if only for a short time. Taking a pen, he began writing in a thin, shaky script that slipped down the page. Only to his wife did Garfield admit his wariness. I wonder, he told her one night, if all this fight against death
- 35:48 – 37:50
Epilogue: remembering Garfield and what changed after his assassination
- DSDavid Senra
is worth the little pinch of life I will get anyway. And so Garfield passes away at just 49 years old. And I want to go to the epilogue of the book, which goes into what happens after his death. A few years after Garfield's death, a reporter gazing at a formal portrait of him that hung in the White House wrote, I fear coming generations of visitors who pass through this grand corridor will see nothing in the stern, sad face of Garfield to remind them that here is a man who loved to play and romp with his sons, who read Tennyson and Longfellow at 50 with as much enthusiastic pleasure as at 20, who walked at evening with his arm around the neck of a friend in affectionate conversation, and whose sweet, sunny, loving nature not even 20 years of political strife could warp. Out of this common sorrow grew a fierce resolve to prevent such a tragedy from ever happening again. Americans did not believe, however, that Garfield had been assassinated because he had walked into the train station, just as he had traveled everywhere since the day of his election, wholly unprotected. Even after losing two presidents to assassins, the idea of surrounding them with guards and so distancing them from the people they served still seemed too imperial, too un-American. In fact, Secret Service agents would not be officially assigned to protect the president until after William McKinley was shot in New York on September 6, 1901. He would die from his wounds eight days later. The day McKinley was shot, Robert Todd Lincoln was once again standing with the president, thus earning the dubious distinction of being the only man to be president at three of our nation's four presidential assassinations. And that is where I'll leave it. You've got to read the whole book. The writing in this book is incredible. The way Candice Miller weaves all these stories together. It's a remarkable story, a remarkable book about a remarkable man that I hope more people take the time to understand and to educate themselves about the life that he lived. That is where I'll leave it. That is 438 books down, 1,000 to go. And I'll talk to you again soon.
Episode duration: 37:53
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Transcript of episode NhO7Y-QWH6c
