The age-herald., 1901-09-20
MEDICAL NEWS DOES
 NOT CONDEMNDOCT TORS

New York. September 1g.-The Medical News, in It's issue of September 2l VIII print review of the Presidents case from a medical point of view.
 The article recites the circumstance Of the shooting and reprints the official re- port of the autopsy and certain unofficial statements credited by the press to the doctors in attendance. IL then takes up the subject of the gRAgrenous condition of the wound, and In this connection says:
 "The grangrene, extensive as 1t was, seems to us not so different from others observed under analogous circumstances as to require the assumption of excep- tional causes for It's explanation. Nee rosis of tissue, in a thinner or thicker cylinder along the track of bullet Is thought to be the rule and ordinarily 1t Is easily taken care of by liquidation and absorption. And necrosis, even Of considerable extent in feeble patients about a sutured wound is certainly not unknown even if rare. and is explained by interference with the local circula- ON coagulation within the blood vessels
 'rhe spread of the process in patient of low reparative power would not be SO very exceptional or surprising. Was the President such patient7 Apparently he was According to Dr. wasdin, when the incision was reAopened toward the end of the fifth day. no effort was required to open 1t throughout it's entire length, ai though only the track of the bullet was affected. That expression would hardly have been used unless he had intended to indicate that the amount of repair usual after that lapse of time had not taken place. Then, the President was 5S years of age. has led a sedetrtary. laborious and anxious life. and had a complexion and appearance which for some years had been commented upon.as indicative of im- l paired vitality.
 Tt is evident that the surgeons. not ably Drs. Mann and Myntsr, with whom the first decision lay, acted with com mendable promptitude and showed excel | lent judgment in the operation and skill | in It's execution They did all that could properly have been done. and nothing that should have been left undone.
 The usual causes of death after such injury and operation were escaped or re- moved or prevented, and their patient succumbed to a complication which is so rare that 1t could not reasonably have been anticipated, and could not have been avertec.
 'aThe President died because he could | At .<f xn,zai v and because the effort to do so was more than the vitality of the tissues involved could support This, of course. excluded the possible presence of poison brought by the bullet or by destructive action by the pancreatic juice. If either of those was a factor its needs only to substitute | in the statement for the assumed defec- tive vitality of the patient. Whatever cause acted it was unrecognizable at the operation and uncomfortable then or sub sequently.
 'There has been some criticism of the confident assurances of recovery made by those in attendance after the fifth day. To us the progress of the case up to that time appears fully to have justi- fled those assurances and the public anx- | iety to have required them.'"
 The review of the cases closes with the following refernce to the doctors:
 "They did their work skillfully and ju- diciously, their behavior was dignihed, restrained and worthy of the best tradl- tions of the profession and they had the misfortune, when success seemed to have been secured, of seeing 1t overthrown by a complication which could not have been foreseen nor avoided.
 They deserve our admiration and sym pa<hy, not our criticism"