Akron daily Democrat. [volume] (Akron, Ohio) 1892-1902, 1901-09-10
Physicians Stated That
He Could Not Live.
But For Weeks the Nation Hoped
While Death Slowly Came.

| not know the course of the bullet.
They were all ready for instant opera
tion should it develop, as, if it did,
there must be instant operation or
might appear to be getting well, but
suddenly the blood might come into
contact with the putrid matter slough
| ing from the wound, and be turned to
| gall, and then the patient would die.
| The operating instruments were kept
at hand, and the surgeon stood guard.
| The newspapers were printing extra
editions almost hourly, and the physi-
clans were issuing frequent bulletins,
but il was well understood-the doc
tors even saying so-that the bulleuns
gave little real information. They
merely recorded the pulse, tempera-
ture and respiration, and left the pub
| lie to make its own deductions. No
diagnosis was made public. From the
rise of the surgical fever on July 8, the
variations of the pulse to July q, were
from 9S to 1876; of the temperature
from $50 to 1919, and of the respir-
alton from 10 to "a.
Not until Friday was pus-which the
physicians said showed that the wound
was healing-seen. Ten days after the
shooting the patients temperature
reached the highest point-10S.S. The
doctors all this time believed that the
bullet had passed between the eleventh
and twelfth ribs, through the liver and
! to the abdominal cavity, where they
said it had lodged in the anterior wall
of the abdomen, from which they ex-
pected to be able to remove it readily,
in due time, without danger.
1t was learned by the public only on
July 13 that the President had ''cir-
/ cumscribed peritonitis," and that he
| had had it since the second day of his
illness. This circumscribed peritonitis
domen and it was believed by the sur
geOns that this located the bullet.
They thought that the tenderness due
to the pertonitis marked where the
bullet had found lodgment but lit
tie lump there which they thought was
the bullet they concluded after the au.
topsy must have been hard pus at the
end of a canal which it had bored for
itself from a point near the beginning
of the bullet wound. The pus worked
| forward, while the bullet had gone
sidewise across the back. but it was
many weary weeks before this was
learned, and the sufferer, from abund-
ant health in midsummer, had passed
through all the stages to the knife of
the post-mortem examiner just before
| the autumnal equinox.
The surgeons had not relied soley
upon the manifestations of the pus-
workings, but had employed upon more
than one occasion the Induction bal
ance." There had been at least two
occasions of serious relapse in the
nj mi 1a1 at nrrfh TN,.
Agnew made an incsion. Explorations
were made along the pus canal, the
supposed course Of the bullet, where
there was channel several inches
deed, but the results were not satisfac.
tory, so experiments to locate the bull
let We're made by the induction balance
under the direction of Professor Gra-
ham Bell and an assistant.
Improvement and relapse continued
through August, and on September s
the President was removed from the
White House to Elberon, his case then
being really hopeless. His condition
fuctuated from that time until his
death at 1875 p. m. on Sept 10. The
autopsy was made the next day, the
knife being used by Dr. D. S. Lamb, of
the Medical Museum at Washington. in
the presence Of the other surgeons.
The official announcement of it's ie.
suits said:
at was found that the ball, after
fracturing the right eleventh rib, had
passed through the spinal column In |
front of the spinal canal, fracturing
the body Of the first lumbar vertebra.
driving number of small fragments
Of bone into the adjacent soft parts and |
lodging below the pancreas, about two
inches and n half to the left Of the
~. hAl.t i'd