This book is about the life, and short presidency, of James A Garfield. The subtitle is “A Tale of Madness, Medicine, and the Murder of a President”. I had not learned much about Garfield, aside from the fact that he was assassinated after only a few months in office. This book brings his personality and political career into focus, and made me regret our country’s loss. If he is not well remembered now, he was well known and respected then, and the country reeled from his death.
This book not only gives us a good picture of Garfield and his family, but also discusses his rival, Roscoe Conkling; his vice president, Chester Arthur; and his assassin, Charles Guiteau. Millard also mentions Joseph Lister, who at the time was trying to convince American doctors of the existence of germs, and Alexander Graham Bell, who used his knowledge and skill to create a device to detect the bullet that had lodged in the President. Unfortunately, due to the egotism and intransigence of the lead doctor treating Garfield, their discoveries did not help the President.
The book opens with Garfield and his family attending the Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia in 1876. Both Lister and Bell were also at the Exhibition, and the author contrasts how their presentations were greeted. Essentially, some advances are accepted, but others, especially if they run counter to what “everyone” knows to be true, are dismissed. Another point the author brought out in her book is the fact that Garfield was the son of a pioneer. His father built a log cabin in Ohio, which at the time, was the frontier. Sadly, he died when Garfield was a toddler, leaving his mother to raise the family in a precarious financial situation. Garfield, obviously, not only survived his childhood, but thrived.
If this was your family, how would you research them? Have you looked at the “cause of death” section on all of those death certificates you have found for your relatives? Sometimes the explanation can be confusing or cryptic, if you can read the handwriting at all! However, starting about 1900, many will have a code also written in that space. To find out what the code means, check out http://www.wolfbane.com/icd/index.html. This website, The International Classification of Diseases, gives decoders for these numbers, based on year. Something less depressing to look into, if your ancestors moved into an area early in its history, are Pioneer listings. Check by state or county. Your ancestors may already be listed; if not, use your research to get them on the list!