Destiny of the Republic - Candice Millard [7]
The dangers Lister described were very different from, and far more lethal than, broken saws and inadequate prosthetics. They could not be seen by the naked eye, and many of the doctors in the audience still did not believe they existed. Despite the prevailing skepticism about his discovery, however, Lister refused to give up. If the scientific evidence he presented was not enough, he would appeal to something more powerful than logic: vanity. He would remind these doctors who they were, and what they, as a nation, had achieved. “American surgeons are renowned throughout the world for their inventive genius, and boldness and skill in execution,” he said. “It is to America that we owe anesthesia, the greatest boon ever conferred upon suffering humanity by human means.” After listing several other discoveries that were the result of American intelligence and industry, Lister beseeched his audience to cast aside their egos and listen to him. He was there, he said, in the hope that they would finally accept “the truth, the value, and the practical application of the principles of Antiseptic Surgery.”
For three hours, Lister did all he could to persuade his audience. He explained his process, gave examples from his own surgical studies, and met each of the doctors’ criticisms, one by one. To the common complaint that antisepsis was “too much trouble,” he replied simply, “It is worth some trouble to be able to seal up an amputation, an exsection, or a large wound, with the absolute certainty that no evil effects will follow.”
Seated in the audience, listening to Lister, was Dr. Frank Hamilton, a highly regarded surgeon from New York who would one day, quite literally, hold James Garfield’s fate in his hands. When given an opportunity to speak, Hamilton assured Lister that he would be “glad to have you convince us that your method is the best.” In his own practice, however, Hamilton preferred to use methods that were quite different from antisepsis. Among them was the “ ‘open-air treatment,’ in which no dressings whatever are employed, but the wound is left open to the air, the discharges being permitted to drop into proper receptacles, or to dry upon the surface.” Hamilton also highly recommended soaking dressings in warm water, and then applying them directly to open wounds.
A few weeks after Lister tried in vain to persuade men like Hamilton that, without antisepsis, they risked the very real danger of killing their patients, James Garfield was descending, once again, into what he knew as the “darkness of death.” At his home in Washington, he watched helplessly as his youngest child, Neddie, a beautiful little boy who had contracted whooping cough soon after attending the centennial fair, died in his small bed.
After he had lost Trot, so many years earlier, Garfield had thought he could never again feel such an all-consuming sorrow. He realized now how wrong he had been. “I am trying to see through it the deep meaning and lesson of this death,” he wrote. “God help me to use the heavy lesson for the good of those of us who remain.” Despite his belief in the goodness of God, however, Garfield knew that death was cruel, unpredictable, and, too often, unpreventable. Perhaps even harder to accept was that the science he so deeply admired, for all its awe-inspiring potential, seemed powerless in the face of it.
Searching for a way to teach his children this hard truth, to prepare them for what inevitably lay ahead, Garfield had often turned to what he knew best—books. After dinner one evening, he pulled a