Daily globe. [volume] (St. Paul, Minn.) 1878-1884, 1881-09-25
INDIGNANT

L
over the report of the autopsy that moth
ing will prevent him from telling the true
story to the public after Gen. Garfield is
buried. He has told the story, however,
to several medical friends in the city, and
from one of them the following verbatim
statement was taken this evening: Gin
| the first place, the post norton as at
| tempted by this man Lamb was so unsat-
Iisfactory to DR.. Agnew that he performed
the last part of it himself The physi-
clans in charge were urged very hard to
send for eminent pathologists not con-
nected with the case, two from Phila-
delphia and two from New York, but
they would not do so, under the plea that
it would reflect, upon them. After they
made an incision into the abdomen, they
broke open sac from four to six inches
long, containing large amount of mat
ter, which ran into the bowels. Then
| they pursued the search down the sup
posed track of the bullet, between the
muscles of the abdomen and the interior
wall of the abdomen, for over an hour.
| Then they took the intestines out and put
| them INTO a wash bowl, and then further
| pursued their
| SEARCH FOR THE BULLET.
Failing to find itwhere they expected,
they looked for it in the intestines, and
found it in the back part of the mass in
| the wash bowl. They claimed that they
could tell where the bullet was located,
but the facts show that they were mis-
| taken. There is no evidence of laceration
of the vertebra, and the track of the
| wound from the place of its entrance had
| all healed, so that it was doing no harm,
and the ball was well encysted in long
| pouch. 1t could not have lain outside Of
! the peritoneum, else how could they have
taken it cut with the intestines. The
| ball, being encysted, could not have rup-
tured an artery. They not examine
the stomach: they did l open any Of
the intestines. They simply opened the
chest and raised the lungs, and called
them healthy. When some one insisted
upon their examination they were not re-
| moved but cut into, and, as soon as they
| were cut into, pus flowed out freely and
kcop;ouslv. They closed them up and
said there was no liberation; there was
| no abscess there. An abscess was found
| first in the left kidney. They said it was
| not an abscess, but en- reaching the left
kidney the abscess was so large that they
were
COMPELLED TO AEMIT
that there was an abscess, and Agnew,
being asked if the left was not the same,
answered: yes, precisely"
600 you think the wound was mortal
one?"
"Not necessarily. The track of the
ball had healed. The ball was encysted;
the vertebra showed no evidence that it
was injured, as there was nothing to in
dictate an injury of the spinal cord at all,
but there were large assesses in and
about the liver, from four to six inches
long. They must have been the result of
a clot of blood formed soon after the
shooting, and, this blood becoming putrid
and disorganized, the whole system be-
came poisoned, and was the cause of
these assesses. If this blood had been
withdrawn at the time, there would have
been nothing to produce these assesses.
That could have been done by an asp1ra-
tor. By the use of an ordinary aspirator
they could have told by the hardness and
tlrmness of the part at the time that the
clot of blood was there. You remember.
Surgeon General Wales, of the navy, said
it was there, and mapped out the size
Of it. l'tB Exsf 3sSs u
~ sSt THE BALL BsT So
entered the cavity of the abdomen. l do
not see how it was possible for the ball to
have wounded the eleventh rib, jumped
down over the twelfth, and wounded the
vertebra that has no rib attached to it
They say the eleventh rib was wounded,
and that the vertebra was penetrated.
They had stated all the time that the long
pus canal was the track of the ball, and
it was the subject of probing all the time
Of course, they have got to make some
excuse. What else could they do? After
they refused to have Psychologists the
whole case was in doubt, because in ordi
nary cases physicians do not make post
norton examinations. | have not made
one in fifteen years. 1t is about as con-
sistent for physician to make his own
post nortcm examinations as it is for
real estate agent to make surveys. There
is no doubt that death was caused by
blood poisoning. At first they were not
inclined to put the fact of blood poison
ing into the autopsy, but finally did so
.unOn MacVeaUh inslstinr fhat If ehou1d