Destiny of the Republic - Candice Millard [78]
The critical difference between these anonymous men and Garfield was that they had received little if any medical care. If Garfield “had been a ‘tough,’ and had received his wound in a Bowery dive,” a contemporary medical critic wrote, “he would have been brought to Bellevue Hospital … without any fuss or feathers, and would have gotten well.” Instead, Garfield was the object of intense medical interest from a menagerie of physicians, each with his own theories and ambitions, and each acutely aware that he was treating the president of the United States.
For one doctor in particular, this national crisis was a rare and heady intersection of medicine and political power—an opportunity for recognition he would never see again. Although ten different doctors had examined Garfield at the train station, as soon as the medical entourage reached the White House, Dr. Doctor Willard Bliss made it perfectly clear that he was in charge. Striding into the room where Garfield was to stay, Bliss immediately began issuing orders. In the chaos and confusion that marked the first hours after the president was shot, Bliss’s complete confidence in his position convinced even his most determined competitors that he had been given full authority over Garfield’s case.
Taking on the role of chief physician, Bliss’s first orders were to isolate the president. In this he had the help of armed military sentinels. The policemen whom Joseph Stanley Brown had requested to secure the White House had been forced to fan out into the city, where, according to one journalist, “the crowds were rapidly increasing in angry excitement.” In their place stood a company of soldiers, refusing entry to even Garfield’s closest friends and advisers and discouraging the most determined visitors. “The glance of their bayonets flashing in the sunlight as they walked with measured tread the several paths to which they were assigned,” one reporter wrote, “recalled the last hours of President Lincoln, when the same astonishment and horror were reflected on the faces of the crowds about the Executive Mansion.”
Inside the White House, Garfield was confined not to just one wing, or even one room, but to a small space within that room. At Bliss’s direction, his bed was pushed to the center of the room and encircled by screens. Even if a visitor were able to make it past the locked gates and armed guards, through the house, up the stairs, and into Garfield’s room, he would still be separated from the president.
To anyone standing beyond the White House gates, it seemed that the president had simply disappeared. So completely removed was he from sight, and so impossible was it to get any information about him, that rumors quickly began to circulate that he had already died. The rumors were so convincing, in fact, that the Washington Post published an extra edition, claiming that “President Garfield was shot and killed this morning.” New Yorkers sorrowfully lowered their flags, only to raise them again a few hours later when they learned that the president was still living.
Having strictly limited Garfield’s visitors to just a handful of family members and friends, Bliss turned his attention to what he considered to be the greatest threat to his newly won position—the other doctors. At the top of his list of potential competitors was Dr. Jedediah Hyde Baxter, the chief medical purveyor of the army and Garfield’s personal physician for the past five years. When Garfield was shot, Baxter had been in Pennsylvania visiting a friend, but he had taken the first express train into Washington as soon as he heard the news. Bliss had been expecting him.
When Baxter arrived at the White House at 9:00 the