Something New

[Eva Elisabeth]

Roger, I think in those days there was no "fixed" equipment in a hospital that couldn't have been brought to the White House. In other words: at a hospital could not more have been done. In the White House instead was room and privacy no hospital could have provided. Stuart was also treated at home after his carriage accident as well as after Powell's attack. So was Major Rathbone. This was 16 years earlier, but I think even in 1881 the main function of a hospital was to provide professional care and doctors' supervision around the clock for those who couldn't afford their own staff of physicians and nurses, thus to serve mainly the poor.

According to this website:
http://featherfoster.wordpress.com/2014/...dy-part-i/
"The wounded Garfield lay in the station for more than an hour, in pain and with shock symptoms beginning. But with remarkable common sense and judgment, it was he who insisted on being taken back to the White House. He even dictated a brief reassuring telegram to his wife, who was supposed to meet him en route...
By the time the stricken man was taken back to a makeshift White House hospital room, a small army of medical men was arriving."

Here's another fascinating article on Garfield's suffering and death:
http://www.eyewitnesstohistory.com/gar.htm

BTW, the physicians could have known better. In 1867, Joseph Lister had introduced the medical world to his concept of anti-septic surgery. The result of this discovery led to a dramatic drop in sepsis-related deaths in Europe and his practices were widely adopted on the Continent, reducing the post-surgical death rate from an estimated 45% to 15%. But American doctors were skeptical that there could be such a thing as invisible germs and were still denying the legitimacy of Lister’s ideas. They were considered too time-consuming, too complicated, and not necessary for expert physicians.