Sawbones: A Marital Tour of Misguided Medicine - Sawbones: Dr. Willard Bliss

Episode Date: November 21, 2023

It was probably the destiny of Dr. Doctor Willard Bliss to become a medical professional, although his career was a real rollercoaster of beliefs and practices. But he obtained the most notoriety for bringing his questionable treatments to one of the most important people in the United States – President James Garfield.Music: "Medicines" by The Taxpayers https://taxpayers.bandcamp.com/

Saubones is a show about medical history, and nothing the hosts say should be taken as medical advice or opinion. It's for fun. Can't you just have fun for an hour and not try to diagnose your mystery boil? We think you've earned it. Just sit back, relax, and enjoy a moment of distraction from that weird growth. You're worth it. that weird growth. You're worth it. Alright, Tommy is about to books. One, two, one, of Miss Guided Medicine. I'm not for the mouth. Hello everybody and welcome to Saw Bones, a marital tour of misguided medicine. I'm your co-host Justin McElroy.

And I'm Sydney McElroy. And I am so delighted to be with you here now, Sydney Recording. I have two monitors set up now. I know, it's very intimidating because I'm... It's a hot topic of conversation. It is. Well, my brothers were making fun of me because it looked like I was looking off camera,

but really, I was just looking at the other monitor. I don't know why you need two monitors. Well, that's a great question, Sydney. I don't have one. Okay, let me put it to you this way. Do you have multiple drawers for your clothes? Yes. Okay, well, websites are like the clothes of my mind. And I need to have a lot of them open.

I want to. Websites are the clothes of your mind. Yes. And you got to have a lot of them open at once. I don't know what to do for them. I have 20 websites going at once. I got my laptop right here in front of me and I have a bunch of tabs open. Like there's a bunch of different.

Yeah. You know, it is a problem. I actually have, I actually have, I'm looking at four different documents that I am currently working on like as we speak. Well, no, not while we're recording, but like I am, they are all open and unfinished and I am still working on all of them at the same time. Like I switch between them as I think of different things to write for each one of them. Oh, that's great.

Wow. Your brain is exhausting to me. I love it. I'm glad it's in your head and not mind. It is so daunting. I also have to have something on TV and music playing while I'm doing that. Oh wow. And then occasionally text messages to interrupt.

Yeah, it's, yeah. Yeah, but you know what? Everybody's different. Yes. And anyway, there's a thin gap between my monitors where I can see my beautiful wife and hear the story of. I appreciate that. You can go ahead. Dr. Willard Bliss. That's right. there's a thin gap between my monitors where I can see my beautiful wife and hear the story of.

You can go ahead. Dr. Willard Bliss. That's right. I don't know who that is, but that's the name that you sent me. That is the name I sent you. Thank you, Daniel, for sending us this topic suggestion.

It is a good one because we have touched on Dr. Willard Bliss before. Touched on. Yes. Not touched. No. Okay. No, no. No. We did, we did not get consent. And he died long before we lived. So you know, there's two barriers right there. I would say the second one is maybe the headline. Maybe we follow up with that. Either way, no, we have mentioned him, but you might not remember because the episode, the episode where we talked about him,

actually there's a series of episodes, I believe, where we talked about the US presidents. Oh, right, yay, yay, yay. And the various illnesses and traumas and wounds and whatnot that had been fallen various presidents. That is where we mentioned Dr. Willard Bliss, but we didn't really dive into him much. But I think he's worthy of a whole episode because he's an interesting, somewhat controversial figure. Okay, tell me more.

So DW Bliss is his name. DW Bliss.. Bliss. D.W. Bliss, okay. This is important. Oh, you're gonna love this so much. So he was born in Brutus, New York in 1825. Okay. His name was inspired by a surgeon that his family, I'm assuming, must have admired, new and must have admired, right?

Right. Why else would you name your child after someone if you didn't have some level of connection? Yes. Respect, admiration, love, care, whatever, whatever the relationship was. He was named for a surgeon who was named Samuel Willard. And now I think it's really important that I clarify what exactly they took from this surgeon Samuel Willard.

So of course, Willard, they took that part. But also he was a doctor. Okay. And they liked that. And I assume wanted their son to be a doctor as well. Because when I say I am talking about Dr. Willard Bliss, Because when I say I am talking about Dr. Willard Bliss, I mean his first name is Dr. Oh, that's good.

And he'd love that. Dr. Willard Bliss would go on to become Dr. Dr. Willard Bliss. Yes, Yes. Yes. Yes. His first name was Dr. That is wild. That is wild. So I will probably usually refer to him as Dr. Bliss because Dr. Willard Bliss is me saying his full like first middle and last name without without the honorific right now he's just at the beginning of his life

he's just Dr. William Bliss Dr. Willard Bliss and then he goes on to become Dr. Dr. which is what like for instance in my line of medical work, I am often called Dr. Sydney. I usually don't go. The doctor, the doctor McRoy is too formal, but somehow Sydney just won't stick with my patients. Like I just tell him to call me by my first name. Like this is all, we're super cash.

Hey, it's cash. We're super cash. But that doesn't stick either. So Dr. Sydney is what has come through or just doc. That's usually that's good. That's yeah. Yeah. But anyway, so doctor doctor, his parents wanted him to be a doctor clearly and he fulfilled

that. You know what? He had a brother. Brother? No. Brother bliss. Well, I mean, no, because like, well, why would you name your, now that would be wild if you named one of your kids

after the profession that you hoped they would have someday. And then the other kid, you just named because of their relationship to the first kid. Yes, I would. If you want to give a kid a complex, that's the way to do it. No, but the other kid, you're like, well, what did they name his brother? Because like, surely it must have been for his future career.

Right. His name was Zenus. Zenus. Zenus. Z. Right. His name was Zenus. Zenus. Z-E-N-A-S, Zenus. Yeah. I guess it's better than like repeat offender bliss. Well, I was talking to Peter.

Serial killer bliss. I mean, that must have been very free. Zenus can be anything. Yeah. Doctor. You got one choice. Yeah. I hope you like Doctor.

So Doctor did what he was expected. He went to Cleveland Medical College. He published his thesis on false joints, which is a so this is when basically maybe salvia. You feel good about that? All right. So he basically this is when a fracture doesn't heal correctly. And you can kind of see it if you look at an X-ray. So imagine a bone, you've got like the joints on either end of the bone where they connect with something, right? Okay. Well, if it breaks right in the middle and then it doesn't heal in the right place like

a non-union, so it's not completely together, you've got a false joint there. It looks like an area where two bones are coming together, but it's not, it's where one bone has not healed completely. That's the same idea. This is a real thing. This is a thing that can happen if a fracture doesn't heal. Appropriately, right? So it hurts, and it might be a little unstable there because it didn't heal all the way.

He quickly got into some trouble though. So early in his medical career, He quickly got into some trouble though. So early in his medical career, he started selling something called Kundarango. Kundarango? Kundarango. Okay.

Okay. This was like one of our, oh man, this is a great classic cure all. Okay. This is like, I don't think we've ever talked about Kundarango on soft bones. It is not ring a bell. Mm-hmm. It is not ring a bell. It was, so this is a type of woody vine that grows, especially in Ecuador, that's where it came from.

It was, and that's, you know, a lot of the, like, kind of curals that we talk about, they will be given a backstory that they were used, like, by an indigenous culture, like, this is a folk medicine thing that we have. Okay, all the ancient wisdom. Exactly, like, we have taken medicine thing that we have. Exactly. Like we have taken this and it has been used

in whatever for a long time. And sometimes those stories are true. And then sometimes they are like retrofitted to make something seem like it has more worth than it really does. I would say this is somewhat in the middle because it was known to have activity in the human body, but it was also perceived as somewhat poisonous.

So it wasn't necessarily being used as a cure all by indigenous cultures before, you know, we Western or stola. But it was touted as this, I mean, the big thing was as a cure for cancer in its time. That's where it rose to fame as like, this is a cure for cancer. There were other things you could use it for, but that was the big purpose. The story behind it that would be that probably wasn't true, but that was spread far and wide was that there was someone dying of cancer, you know, like again, these would have been indigenous people. There was somebody who was dying of cancer and his wife attempting to alleviate his suffering

and hasten his death, gave him some kundarango knowing it was poisonous as a way to like, it's like, in a humane way. Tastically, I mean in a in a human way. I don't mean like tastefully wrap it up Yeah, I'm talking about like choosing like he like choosing to end your life to end your suffering kind of thing I don't mean like she was murdering it. I think we're saying the same things. Yes So anyway, he he took it and instead of dying he got better. Oh Oh. And so at that point, it began to be widespread as like, oh, well, okay, actually, this isn't a poison, this cures cancer and isn't this exciting. So the word spread and people began to administer it for a variety of different things, right?

Like that's what usually happens. You find out something like at this point in history, it works for something, so it must work for everything. Right. And heck, I say this point in history. This is now. This is now. This is now. Like, oh, it has an effect. We should use it on everything. But even as these reports were being spread, that this was something that could cure cancer. And we're really, we're like in the 1800s at this point, probably like the mid 1800s to late 1800s, is we're moving into, as this was being popularized, you're really at the edge of when you could get away with that stuff. You're starting to move into a time period where science and like the empiric method. There's a more general acceptance of like there is a standard by which we do these things.

We are moving further and further away from the patent medicine days as you get to the turn of the century and then you know moving forward like the scientific method is becoming more prominent. And so even as this was being spread as like, hey, this is a cure for cancer, there were people investigating that to see like, is this really, like, I'm gonna go behind these patients that were supposedly cured, I'm gonna go find those people and interview them.

And what they were finding, people were reporting, is like, I went to find this person who was cured by Koon Narengo and they died. Oops. So they didn't, it didn't cure them. Did not cure. So, I mean, like, was already a lot of like controversy around this, even as it was being touted

as this like miracle cure. Either way, there was a diplomat there from the US who wanted to settle the matter by sending samples of this fine back to the US to different doctors there to say like, hey, test it. Try this out. Let's settle this. We'll see what we got here. Once and for hey, test it. Try this out. Let's settle this. Let's say we'll have a guy here.

Once and for all, give it to some patients. You know, because you can just do that back then. Yeah. Like here, take this. Take this. I don't know. And you're going to do science. You want to do science?

I'd like to live. Well, okay. What if you will live maybe, but do science? Definitely. This is, but can I tell you though, this is like why IRB approval, like the idea that before you do a study or give people an experimental drug, you have to like get a board of people to say like,

yes, this is an okay thing to do. The reason we do that is because in this exact situation and this exists now, you have someone who is being told, okay, you have cancer, we barely understand it. Right. All we know is we can't fix it. All we know is that all the stuff we do seems to either not help or make it worse and it will kill you. I have this vine. I have this bark. I have this substance. It probably does nothing. it might be poison, or it might cure cancer.

We have no idea, but it's either that or you definitely die. So. You tell me. So you want it? And that's the problem is almost any sane person would say, sure. Yeah.

Yeah, I'll take it. Of course, of course. What's the alternative? Of course I'll try it. And so this is why we have approval for these things is because you're getting people who are very vulnerable Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Yeah, of course, of course. Like, what's the alternative? Of course, I'll try it. Right. And so this is why we have approval for these things is because you're getting people who are very vulnerable in a situation where like, there's an illusion of choice. Right.

But there really is a. You didn't need an impartial third party. So anyway, it was sent to different doctors to try it out. And one of the doctors who got it, of course, was Dr. Dr. Bliss. Dr. Dr. Bliss. And he was just- Not at like patient wise, Got it like to use. To use to give to patients and he was wild about it.

He claimed that he cured three people of cancer. Dang. With this. That's this. Kundaranko. That's really impressive. Yeah. He was very excited. He cured three people. These accounts of it were published alongside of this, like the account, like basically the whole story kind of broke at once, like this diplomat finds ancient traditional

cure for cancer, sends it to doctors in the US, and then Dr. Bliss is like, yes, this is the best stuff ever. I cured three people. Right. And at the same time, he sets up an importing business to get as much of it over your responsible. Exactly. So that he can get that miracle drug out there

and start making some cash. He was selling it for $160 a pound. And then, and let me start with that $160 a pound, which actually Justin. Yes, Sydney. If we look up at like $18.50, what was $160 and $18.50? What would that be in 2023 money? I'll tell you. It's a good estimation. It would have been in late 1840s or late 1850. So 1850.

Okay. So when are we talking? 1850, $160. That is $6,311 today per pound. Wow. For a pound of this stuff. Yeah. Now, I will say that almost as soon as he started selling it, there were already authorities who were questioning this stuff and investigating the tactics being used to sell different patent medicines and stuff like that. And so the price was quickly dropped to $38 a pound to try to fly under the radar a little

bit more, so to speak. All right, just out of curiosity, that is $1,500. Still. And now the thought would be that like, you would like, yes, individuals could buy it, also doctors could buy it to administer to patients. And then the patients would have to pay the doctors, of course. But either way, so it's super expensive. And almost as soon as he started selling it, there are other doctors who were like,

oh, I tried that. That didn't work. Like no, no, no, no, no, we, I got one of the other doctors who got sent that. And it definitely did not have the miraculous results that you're saying it did. They said, I mean, a lot of them didn't even, like they gave it to somebody, it did nothing, they moved on. Like it was so ineffective.

And as a result of all this in 1853, Bliss was actually kicked out of the Washington, DC medical society. So it was like, and the reason this is important is that this was a visible, like, people knew this guy is pushing a fake medicine. Right. So this definitely harmed his reputation, right? And I think it's important to understand that he was not like a doctor who was widely accepted to be an amazing, like, super doctor. Even though he was Dr. Dr. Double

Doctor. He wasn't widely accepted to be this amazing physician. He had been thrown out of the medical society. And I think this is important to know because he's about to treat some US presidents. Oh wow. And I'm going to tell you about that after we go to the Belling Department. Let's go. The medicines, the medicines that I skilled at my cards before the mouth. Oh, darling, why won't you accept my love? My dear, even though you are a duke, I could never love you. You, you borrowed a book from me and never returned it!

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A show for adult idiots every other week on Maximum Fun. Thank you, geniuses. We know everything. Thank you, geniuses. That's something we don't know. Sydney, even our great heroes, the US presidents, are not immune to the charms of fake medicine. No, no, absolutely they're not. Our greatest American heroes heroes and even they are absolutely they're not no, I mean if you go back to the annals of medical history you will find presidents who have suggested things like injecting bleach into our veins.

You gotta go way back. You gotta go way back. I mean, and you can find presidents who have suggested things like if we could get like ultraviolet light inside our bodies, like put lights inside that we could kill illnesses, like maybe a virus or something, like you could think of that. You gotta be talking about like Polk or Harrison,

one of those like way back. You gotta go way back. I mean way back. Way back. To find examples of absolute like I don't have ignorance is a strong enough word like thinking it'll be wrapped up by Easter and would that be lovely yeah whatever it may be like whatever pandemic right right right I mean there's some truly wild suggestions that have come from I, historical figures in the American presidency.

So in the midst of all this somewhere, he may have treated Zachary Taylor from malaria, so there's our first little presidential. This is important. But that, it's funny, because I was reading about like, oh, we treated two presidents, because we're going to get into the other one that he treated famously was responsible for maybe his death. That Bliss may have treated Zachary Taylor as well, which is like a cool, that's cool two different presidents, but on the flip side, like if you look at the dates, he wouldn't have had a medical degree yet.

Oh, wow. But at the same time, that also isn't that wild for the top, like the idea that he would have been in training or Printocene or something and like maybe he's still doing medicine. That's not even that's not that wild. I guess but like it's possible. Is it a sitting president though? Like you think it's spring for a doctor not that at that point now. No, no. Now he will treat a sitting president soon He did serve as a surgeon during the Civil War. And like, and I think that this, again, maybe this helps inform why he's he's going to be called up to treat the US president is that there's like this mixed bag of accomplishment. So we have this already

this history of he's thrown out of the medical society for pushing a fake medicine. But on the flip side, he was a strong advocate for the inclusion of black physicians in the medical society. So and he was also ostracized for that. So like part of the reason he didn't have the best reputation was because he was doing some good stuff, right? But on the other hand, he was a strong advocate for homeopathy. I know.

So that's bad. And what that resulted in is that like he was so criticized for adopting homeopathy when it was kind of like on the rise, when it was at least an hour part of the world, it was on the rise. He was like an early adopter like this is new, this is great, kind of like with the Kundarango, this is new, this is great. I'm on the cutting edge, I love this stuff. And he was so, and he was thrown out of medical societies and really fell out of favor for all this stuff. When Lister shows up around this same time and is like, hey, I have this great new theory about antiseptic technique and about the importance of keeping things clean and sterile

so that we don't pass infections. And hand you know, hand washing was just being popularized and all this stuff. Uh, Dr. Bliss was like, definitely not buying any of that. Definitely not a real mixed bag. Right. Like a roller coaster of things happening with this guy because like, and it's important to know that he did not buy into antisepsis. He did not buy that we needed to clean things, our instruments, our hands,

or wear gloves, or anything that would prevent us from just sticking our dirty unwashed fingers into an open, like, let's say, bullet wound. There were no precautions taken in those situations. And this would lead to the hallmark of his career, which is when President James Garfield was shot on July 2nd, 1881. This is why, if you've ever heard of Dr. Dr. Bliss, this is probably why, because of his association with President Garfield. So like I said, he was not a particularly well-respective physician. And so you may wonder, like, the president's been shot.

They need to call a doctor. How in the world does this guy get the call? Now part of this, they just looked up doctor in the phone book and it was the first one. He was the first one. This guy's got it twice. There's a couple of reasons that explain this. There was someone involved with the president.

There was one of his staff who claimed that Dr. Bliss had treated Abraham Lincoln, which he was maybe around, but maybe was not as involved as he later would go on to claim he was involved. So that was a little questionable, but like there was this connection, he maybe did this thing with Zachary Taylor, where he treated his malaria. He had served. That was respected, of course. Like, so like there were some people who were like, I heard about that guy. I think he's a pretty good, I don't know, maybe. But then there's also this story. I heard something about him. I don't remember if it was good or not, but we should get him

in here with the president. There's also this story from the White House steward of the time, a Mr. Crump who said that Mr. Crump, who he's recounting like a moment after Dr. Bliss has already been caught to take care of the president and he's sitting by his bed and he's holding his hand. And he says Garfield had a hold of Dr. Bliss's hand and turned his head and asked me if I knew where he first saw Bliss. I told him I didn't. And then he said he would tell me he said that when he was a youngster and started for college at higher him, he had just $15, a $10 bill in an old leather pocket book, and a five in his trouser pocket.

Anyway, he was footing it up the road. It was hot. He took off his coat. He was taking good care not to drop his pocket book that has his money in it, right? Because this is his college tuition, by the way. This $15, this is his college tuition. I know everybody can take a moment to like feel nauseous. What is your college tuition? It was $15 at this point. Yeah.

After a while, he was thinking about college. Anyway, he turns out- Let's be also clear though, college is probably a bit of a joke. Like they didn't know anything. What are you? A big stop. People knew stop. They were so human.

There have always been smart people. Yeah. And there have always been not smart people. I'm just being that. That's the human race. So anyway, he drops his purse. And he goes back along the road trying to find it and he can't find it.

And he comes up to a house and there's this dude leaning on a gate and he's like, I'm looking for a purse if you've seen it. And the guy's like, yeah, actually I do. And I'm gonna hand it right over to you with the money still in it. Didn't take any of the money. Handed it right back over.

And that was Dr. Dr. Bliss. Bliss, who gave him his cash back, got him, which he credited with, like, you know, if I hadn't, like, and Bliss supported this, you know, if I'd done that, you wouldn't have gone to college, and then you probably never would have been president of the United States.

Which you could also pair with, like, and then you probably also wouldn't have been shot. Yes, that's true, but it was sliding towards. I mean, you can't. I need to talk about Mr. Crump. If you name your kid, Dr. Doctor, you are guaranteeing that he will be a doctor. I think even more than that,

if your child is named Mr. Crump, you are guaranteeing they're going to be a steward at the White House, Probably under James Garfield. Like Mr. Crump can only do think about, I'm local. Lithario, Mr. Crump. I run a watch door. My name is Mr. Crump. I think you're not, you're not.

I'll be your lawyer, Mr. Crump. We don't know his first name. Like if he had it, it's Mr. if he had the right first name, we could pull it off. As a LaFaria. It's geez. It's names. Jeeps Crump.

What if his first name is sexy? Sexy. Crump sexy. Crump. Sexy. Crump. It can be a LaFaria. His first name.

Sexy. Sexy. It's my middle name. Oh, yeah. It's my first. They call me sexy. Jeeps. Crump. It's, it's my fur. They call me Dr. Cee James Crump. They call me Dr.

Dr. Willard Bliss Crump. No, his name wasn't Crump. So for whatever reason, Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr.

Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Sexy Bliss. But you read all these stories and it's like, so did he call him to his bedside because he had this old relationship with him? If so, why wasn't he his personal physician?

Because he was not the personal physician to the president. Absolutely not. There was a personal physician to the president who would show up two days later and like Bliss would get in a fight with him basically and be like, this is my show, bud. Yeah.

I'm going to make history with this. I am going to be remembered for this, which he is remembered for this. And you are not and you're going to get out of here, which is kind of what Bliss did. So he showed up to tend to Garfield after he was shot. Other doctors tried to help and he basically ran everybody off, and then sort of re-staffed with his own team, like his own hand selected team. Kind of like House does, you know?

And once he had his people to help him, he started off with his treatment method. A lot of this involved probing the wound repeatedly with his fingers and dirty instruments. And it was all in this effort to remove the bullet, probing the wound repeatedly with his fingers and dirty instruments. And it was all in this effort to remove the bullet, which a lot of this has been questioned through medical history because at this time period, we already kind of knew that you didn't necessarily have to.

Like sometimes you do. And obviously it's a lot more common today that you'd go in and get whatever it is out. But back then, because there was such a high risk with surgery, the idea of digging around to pull a bullet out, you wouldn't always do that. There are times where you can leave it be and that's actually less harm. But he didn't buy it, so he dug around in there with his dirty hands and his dirty instruments, definitely introducing infection.

Other doctors did as well that were part of the team, so like it was probed multiple times. But when the lead doc is like handwashing, not for me. Exactly. I mean, what standard are you shooting for? We are still at a time where a lot of doctors kind of felt like the blood stains on the coat and the dirty hands and that there was even like a smell

that it was like the stink of the something I forget. Anyway, all of that was good. Like to have like the stink of the OR on you was a good thing. You should be bloody and gross. You're a doctor. I like a butcher. But yeah, but you're a doctor. So anyway, so he was, he was using those techniques.

He actually at one point he had Alexander Graham Bell, calm, because he had like, he'd made like a metal detector. Basically, like an early metal detector to try to find the bullet. And he wasn't able to find it and Bliss blamed him. And was like, your thing doesn't work. It's your fault. But it did work. It's this same device actually did work on other people

in the same time period. So what we now think is that Bliss was telling him to look in the wrong area. That Bliss was very certain, this is where the bullet must be. And he actually just had a wrong idea of the trajectory of the bullet and where it would have ended up.

And that if Bell had been allowed to look in a different place, he probably could have found it. Which is kind of cool. Now, I don't know that that would have helped, because again, I don't know that digging around in his abdomen anymore would have made things better. Bliss would also use rectal feeding as an important method of like improving

the nutritional status of Garfield and like even published. Sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry. I have to make a request. Yes. If you're going to use a phrase like rectal feeding, you have to specify that you mean president Garfield and not Garfield. Okay.

You can't have an audio file out there where you're like, I use rectal feeding on Garfield and then people just make that their text tone. You can't do that. You have to specify who you meet. Take it again, take it clean, we'll get it in post. He used rectal feeding on president Garfield. Thank you.

James Garfield, you might be doing some historical fiction, where Garfield's elected president is shot because of an imagined political that or whatever it was. And then, okay, president James Garfield. And you can read more about this in the study that he did publish feeding per rectum as illustrated in the case of the late president Garfield. He always did it on Mondays and no one could figure out why.

Do you think it was lasagna? Shut up. Take you back. Take your back. You don't mean that. It wasn't. It was a way of introducing nutrition. He was hoping he could do so through the rectum because he was having trouble eating anyway. The point is he employed a lot of a lot of the techniques that he would have used would have been like commonplace at the time, right? Like we did a lot of stuff that was not necessarily helpful throughout all of medical history, including probably yesterday. Sorry. Sorry.

I mean, it's a science man. But anyway, so he tried to remove the wound. There would have been like caustics used, course things like Laxatives and certain feeding techniques and nutritional supplements and all of this amounted to Garfield president Garfield Not getting better. He lingered on For like two months before he would die Now there has been much debate as to did he die from being shot or did he die from the treatment that he received for the two months after he was shot?

I looked it up and it was 79 days. So I'm going to go ahead and give that credit to all William Bliss, I mean, which was the defense, by the way, from the guy who shot him. Charles Guto, who was actually the one who shot President Garfield. I didn't kill him. I didn't kill him as doctors did. I wouldn't have done that. Yeah, I did shoot him.

Definitely me, but I am not responsible for the death of the president. That is did. His doctors killed him. That was, now I, that did not work. He was found guilty and executed. It's, and I will say, it's funny because I found there were, there have been papers published since then. Funny.

Uh, interesting. Okay. Where people have gone back to like analyze the medical care that Bliss provided in his team to see like, did he really, did he kill him or did he do the best he could? And this was like, because there's been a lot of conversation about what actually finally killed him was he septic, like it wasn't as straightforward as they got bacteria in the wound. He became septic and died because that would have happened much faster. Obviously,

it happened over the course of 79 days. So what else would have triggered this? He may have had a bout of colysis titus, which is like an infection inflammation of the gallbladder, which would have been very difficult to treat at the time, because we didn't have antibiotics, and we didn't have, we couldn't do surgery easily because no anesthetic and no, you know, all that kind of stuff. So anyway, there's a lot of debate, did Bliss and his team really cause his death or was the death inevitable and maybe he just wasn't doing anything helpful, but that was inevitable. Either way, maybe he wrote the Captain of the live for 79 days with his dirty, dirty fingers.

Maybe that. Maybe he did. Maybe that's what. Maybe he did. Philphe jam-stained fingers. At the end of it all, Bliss, even after President Garfield finally succumbed to illness, to sepsis from something, he gave a bill to the government for $25,000, which would be equivalent to $760,000 now. The government offered him $6,500,

which would be equivalent to $200,000. Oh, bad. Yeah. And he was insulted and refused. Wow. What a guy. So he will forever be, I didn't, hey, did you notice I didn't kill him off?

Yeah, I think he is no longer alive, but you probably guessed that. Well, no, they didn't have to because did you notice I didn't kill him off? Yeah, I think so. I mean, he is no longer alive, but you probably guessed that. Well, no, they didn't have to because you clarified at the beginning of the show that he was dead. You put the death at the beginning. Well, we all understand human life spans here at Solbona, but it's interesting because he will, I think if you know his name, other than being known for the doctor who was named doctor, he will also always be remembered as the, he was

the doctor who treated at least one president, James Garfield, maybe more, um, to limited success, one might say, hey, he gave it his best. There's a really good book about this that I read long time ago called Destiny of the Republic that goes into more of the like out of the underground bell stuff and all that stuff. I read it so many years ago, I've forgotten all the relevant details. There's only this episode that is renewed

this in my memory, but it's a very good book. I remember that, the retention end, I don't know, but Candace Milar Destiny of the Republic. Well, and I mean, this is an area of medical history that has been so interesting because it intersects with obviously it was a president. the retention end, I don't know, but Candace Milar destiny of the Republic to get back. Well, and I mean, this is an area of medical history that has been so inch because it intersects with, obviously, it was a president. And so it elevates it to this thing where there are tons of books and papers and studies and journal articles and opinion pieces out there discussing all of the various elements

of Bliss's care and what was bad, what was good, what was normal for the time, but we wouldn't do now. You know what I mean? So like, if you're interested, there's tons you can read about this. But I thought, Dr. Dr. Bliss deserved a little more deep dive into his own history. And Kundarango does not cure cancer. Sorry, folks. So if you encounter it, don't use it.

That is going to do it for us for this episode. We hope you have enjoyed yourself. We hope you've you're enjoying your holiday Preparations and travels whatever those may look like. I want to thank the taxpayers for using their song Medicines as the intro and outro of our program. Camelites our fake holiday is Beginning or has begun or will begin soon depending on when you are observing. It's completely up to you. But we got some Camelites ornaments and posters in the store if you get a Macrored merch.com.

That is going to do it for us for this week. So until next time, my name is Justin Macroi. I'm Sydney Macroi. And as always, don't drill a hole. Here. Max Mom Fine, a work-road network of artist-owned shows supported directly by you.