, 1882-06-30
Puget Sound Argus.
ALLEN WEIR, Editorand Proprietor,
The Spent Bullet

with stupidity. selected hrr weapons
with ignorance. and welded her
forces with passionate faehleness;
but she never made SO pltlful a dis
play and SO futile use Of her re
sources. as science made over the
death bed of President Garfield
When the question is of nebulT, Of
atoms, of the rocks growth and the
earth's age, of the spirits substance,
of hfe's origin, of the infinite in
space, the inconceiyable in time, the
unknowable in eternity science has
it all her own way. We cannot bridge
the chasm between mind and matter.
No man has seen God at any time, to
prove him the creator. From the
grave no being has arisen to our eyes,
and from the stars no voice comes to
our ears to dispute whatever the wise
men may say.
But here was solid ground for
science to stand on and demonstrate
her power, She had nothing to do
with the remote, with the past, with
distractions. Before her eyes, under
her hand, lay a human soul in sore
strait, a human life hunted into the
valley of the shadow of death, long
ing to come out again into the sun
shine of the fair and open day. The
whole nation, the whole world shared
in the longing. Whatever love and
wealth could proffer was ready to the
hand of science. Everything that
gratitude could inspire, everything
that ambition could desire, lay in wait
to reward the man who should con-
duct the august sufferer back through
the gates of life
And science accepted the trust
manfully. The most celebrated and
the most accomplished brought to
that darkened chamber their highest
knowledge with every renewed and
unwearying effort. The railroad and
the telegraph were put under their
control. No cost hindered any ex-
pertinent or crrtailed any care. The
nation stood behind, not only per-
mitting, but urging every expenditure
of brain and money; to the same
end, urged by their own self interest,
patriotism, and humanity. Day and
night they ceased not to work and
watch, and the result was failure,
absolute, thorough, undisputed fail
ure-failure so minute and complete,
that only its terrible gravity kept it
from being ridiculous, and not even
its terrible gravity could keep it from
being grotesque.
Science can spin the world back
between her thumb and finger
billion years, and we go spinning with
it because we cannot help ourselves.
Science can locate the soul in the
grayish matter of the brain, and we
submit because we cannot dig deeper
than that grayish matter to search for
deeper soul. But when science
comes into a practical realm where
we can prove or disprove her accuracy,
her keenest scent for truth, her finest
touch of skill is to grope till the man
is dead and then find the bullet in
wash-bowl. Nescience could do that
What availed science to Garfield?
She never treated or touched the
wound which the bullet made, and
which she was summoned to heal.
She never even found it. She made
two ghastly wounds herself, and for
eighty days she clawed at them. The
bullet which the surgeons could not
find, nature carefully encysted. The
bullet wound which they never
touched, nature safely and silently
healed.
Surgical science is reduced to the
pitifnl claim that she alone kept Gar
field alive for eighty days. This is a
suicidal self-relegation to the un-
provable. Routed on the tangible
field of fact, she fees to the cloud
land of speculation, and again throws
up intrenchments. So claimed the
pious and thrifty Winchester for bluff
King Hal
"The Church's prayers made him 80 pros
porous"
And as grim Gloster thundered
back:
"The church! Where is it?
had not churchmen prayed,
His thread of life had not so soon decayed."
so in response to this claim, which
can never be demonstrated, is it
equally irrefutable and perfectly fair
to say:
i" Had not the doctors preyed,
His thread of life had not 50 soon decayed."
Nescience has precisely the same
right and the same reason to specu
late; take man in perfect health.
and give him into the control of sur
geons, unwounded, and let them make
two such wounds as Garfield suffered
at his surgeons hands and let them
bore into these wounds every day as
Garfeld's wounds were bored into
sometimes with seven different cathe-
ters of different sizes at a single
dressing and let them feed the man
as Garfield was fed, and furnish him
with the malarious air that Garfield