Sacramento daily record-union. [volume] (Sacramento [Calif.]) 1875-1891, 1881-08-15

medical advisers IS IN TACT one OF peculiar
hardship. If the President RECEIVERS they
are likely to get very little thanks for their
skill, while if he dies they are tolerably
certain to be denounced as having killed
him.
The rational presumption is, and has
been from the first, that he is being treated
as skillfully as possible. His physicians
are all men of wide experience and we'll
proved skill They have every reason to
pay the utmost attention to the case, and
there is ample evidence that they are
doing so. 1t must be remembered that
the Presidents wound was very serious
one and that had he died from it in the
first twenty-four hours there would have
been no ground for. surprise. His doctors
have been fighting death off from hour
to hour and from day to day, and they
have had many untoward circumstances to
contend with, not the least difficult being
the heat of the weather and the presence
of malarious poison in the atmosphere.
The President has mended very slowly,
beyond question, but we think after all
that it il ather matter of surprise that
he should have improved at all than that
he should not have recovered more rapidly.
The continuous discharge from his wound
has necessarily drained his vitality very
greatly, yet it was clearly impossible to
obviate the necessity of this drainage.
The closing of the wound while suppura.
ton was going on would have been his
death sentence. The two accidental stop
pages of the discharge which have occurred
were instantly followed by accessions of
fever which if not relieved would speedily
have ended the long struggle. The doctors
have had to guard against blood-poison.
ing on the one hand, and to keep up the
strength Of the patient on the other
They have been seriously embarrassed in
theirefforts to accomplish the second of these
desiderata, first, by the morbid condition
of his digestive organs, and second, by the
state OF the weather and the presence of
malaria. We think it scarcely doubtful
that the patients fever is due quite as
much to the misasmatous poison of the
Potomac swamps as to the effect OF his
wound, and this the physicians have
recognized by the exhibition of quinine on
several occasions.
The President is and has been through
out exceedingly weak. This is perfectly
natural. The shock to the system result
ing from such wound must have lowered
the vitality greatly, while the discharge
since suppuration set in has prevented
the doctors from recovering any of the lost
strength. Those only who jumped without
reflection to the conclusion that since he
did not die az once he was sure to recover,
can find fault with the tediousness of his
convalescence. We have never regarded
the case very hopefully, and have appre-
hended the danger of fatal relapse from
the beginning, because we saw that the
longer suppuration continued the feebler
the patient must become, and the more
accessible to hostile influences. OF all the
foolish propositions which have been made,
however, in this connection, that of the
New York Times, for a change Of physi-
clans, appears to us TO be the most prepos-
ferrous conceivable Abraham Lincoln had
saying that it would not do to swap horses
while you were crossing a stream, and this
saying may be applied here very appropIi-
ately. The physicians now In charge OF
the case are unquestionably the only men
in the country who have had the oppor-
tunity to masteri it thoroughly. If anyone
understands it they do. 1t is fair pre-
sumption, taking their professional stand
ing into consideration, that if they cannot
cure the President nobody can, especially
at this juncture. If new physicians were
called in they would have everything to
learn respecting the case, and while they
were learning they would have to proceed
tentatively. But meantime what would
the patient be doing? He would very
probably be sinking, and by the time the
new doctors had mastered the cas-, he
would very probably be dead.
And If the position of the present medi-
cal attendants is embarrassing and difficult,
what would that of their successors be ?
Should the patient grow worse under their
hands they would instantly be accused of
ma!treatmcns, and even if he survived it
could never be demonstrated that they had
cured him. But in truth the proposition
is an absurd and an irrational one.
There Is nothing for it but to 60 on in the
present course. DR.. Bliss and his colleagues
have, we are satisfied, done their best, and
we are also satisfied that their best is quite
as good as tina. of any similar number of
doctors on the continent The ultimate
outcome of such wound as the President
received is OF necessity always problem
atical. Skill may do much, but it never
can absolutely determine such case.
Should General Garfield recover, his medi-
cal attendants will deserve the warmest
thanks OF the country, and should the
hope of the nation be disappointed, it will
remain true that these gentlemen did their
full duty under alphabetically trying and
difficult circumstances. AS to the New
York Times, we know it to be friend of
the President, but were this not an ascer-
tanned fact we should be tempted to believe
that it bore malice against him, or it would
not have deliberately proposed step SO
fraught with danger to his life as change
Of physicians at this critical iuncture in
his case.
IMPUDEEr SOCIALISTS.
A gang of Socialists have been holding
meeting in Boston, and passing resolutions
abusing Secretary Blaine because he re-
fused to say what he should do in case the
Russian Government demanded the extra
dition of Hartmann, the assassin. The
browning impudence of these fellows con-
sists in their pretense of right to speak
in behalf Of the American people, how