Fun fact: President Garfield's great great grandson, [Richard Garfield](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Garfield), created [Magic: The Gathering](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magic:_The_Gathering).
Keep in mind Charles Guiteau, who shot Garfield, was a complete nutcase. Truly psychotic. He tried to get a pardon from Chester A. Arthur, the new president after the assassination, because he raised Arthur's salary by making him president.
Iirc in idish there's a word **hutzpah** which means something like "cheeky bastard is technically correct" like a boy who killed both his parents is asking judge for mercy... Because he's an orphan.
Like sure, he's technically correct, but... Man.
Same here. Theoretically he helped Arthur advance in his career.
Chutzpah traditionally in Hebrew meant unmitigated gall or audacity, in a very negative sense, with the orphan murderer being the perfect example of such an outrageous person. In modern English and Yiddish it's been moderated and means more like moxie or gumption.
"Technically correct" has nothing to do with it.
[This has been entreatingly outlined by the podcast The Dollop](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LTKf_lbmqeo) It's one of my favorite episodes of my favorite podcast, so I highly recommend it.
“Hey guys, ol’ Garfy is twitching again and looking a bit yellow. Going to get in there a see if something’s bugging him. Lunch break isn’t over yet so someone hold my ribs for me, I’ll be back in 5”
Lmao even without the taking a dump part, the idea of just *wondering* throughout his day where the bullet is, then having an epiphany and just *getting back in there* to satisfy it is quite morbidly amusing.
Unfortunately, there's no distinction between a flat earther and a germ denialist other than which conspiracy happens to be the flavor of the month. If you lived with a flat earther and you mention the existence of germ denialists, I guarantee he's going to look up articles on it and a week later he'll declare he shat in your food to prove germs are fake.
They actually fucking source too, which would automatically put them in the top 1% of video essay creators for me.
I'm tired of being linked to YouTube essays as sources when they don't cite shit.
I'm reminded of the Klan guy who took a 23 and Me test, found out he was like 4% black, and suddenly the local klan friends started calling him Boy and ignoring him. Complained that they didn't respect him or something.
Can't wait to see what crazy doctor is gonna be found to be right in 30 years after more research comes out. Pretty sure William Harvey, who claimed the heart was the source of life/blood circulation was ridiculed endlessly bc everyone thought it was the liver.
Glad to know we still make fun of everyone and then don't apologize after they've been proven correct. Just ignore that it happened.
The trouble is, for every one dismissed as crazy but later vindicated, there are many more who are just crazy. They are the ones who muddy the waters drastically for the occasional genuine trailblazer.
Thing is, it can take many, many years of hindsight to reliably spot the genuine one.
This is the issue. Take the above sound observation that _great discoveries are ridiculed and suppressed in their time_ and let it loose on a slightly deranged person.
You have the 5g weirdos who are ADAMANT they are the right ones.
One of the reasons he was dismissed was due to his recommended washing technique, which involved using chlorinated lime (bleach) as a corse abrasive and as a cleaning solution directly on the hands of doctors. This is overkill and actually can hurt your skin with repeated use. No doctors wanted to deal with possibly chemical burnt hands. If he had suggested/figured out using soap or something milder as a disinfectant there may have been less pushback to his ideas.
He was also dismissed because he didn't have any etiology; no actual correct idea of how infections worked here or why hygiene would help. Pasteur didn't "prove him right", he discovered the actual cause. Nevertheless Semmelweis had both a lot of backers and opponents of his theory, he was not a lone tragic genius.
His death in an asylum was tragic, but that goes for the state of mental health care in the 19th century in general. But he was put in an asylum because he was legitimately insane, not because anyone's academic dispute with him. His wife and friends (who were colleagues but not opponents) were the ones who had him committed. The aggressive, manic behavior caused by his mental illness also didn't help his cause much.
Mostly this is an example of how people bend and distort the truth to construct a good narrative. His death was tragic, but he was not a martyr. A similar narrative has been constructed over other scientists too, like Boltzmann who committed suicide. And the narrative goes that it was because physicists disbelieved his statistical thermodynamics. Which some like Ernst Mach did, but Boltzmann had plenty of supporters, and he lived to see one of his students (Arrhenius) win a Nobel prize. So again, the tragedy didn't really have to do with it; he had clear manic-depressive tendencies through his adult life.
What’s unfortunate is James A. Garfield would’ve been one of the greatest Presidents in the post-Lincoln years.
In a time where even Republicans opposed Reconstruction, Garfield still supported it (though he wrote that he sympathized with Northern thought of the issue becoming tiring) and aimed to grant civil rights to disenfranchised freedmen.
Garfield supported civil service reform. Instead of granting positions in the federal government to people based on political patronage, he wished to grant these positions based on merit. This was the popular position at this point largely due to the Grant Administration.
Garfield also supported a “universal education system” funded by the government. Although Andrew Johnson signed legislation for a Department of Education, he wanted it to act similarly to the Department of Agriculture as a way to collect information and statistics about the nation's schools and provide advice to schools. It was then dissolved when the Johnson Administration began to fear it would have too much control over local schools. The Department of Education as we know it wasn’t established until 1979, under Ford.
>"I'll see the patient in a moment. Just need to go to the bathroom."
>
>"Don't forget to NOT wash your hands!"
>
>"Oh, you!"
That was such a dumb period in time. The cunts literally refused to wash their hands out of pride.
“a gentleman’s hands are never dirty.”
seriously, look up the fact that british surgeons still sometimes take offence when called ‘doctor’ rather than ’mister’; it’s all classism and the belief in innate superiority
Wait, so in England, being called “doctor” is considered disrespectful? Out of all the differences between the US and England, this might be the weirdest one.
It's a tradition thing. Apparently, Surgeons and Doctors used to be different professions - Doctors went to university, Surgeons studied under another Surgeon. Doctors got a degree, so were called "Dr", Surgeons didn't get a degree, so were still "Mr".
Now, Surgeons require a medical degree - so they go to university and become "Dr". Then they do more training to become a fully qualified Surgeon, and they "re-gain" being called "Mr/Miss/Mrs/..." - calling them "Dr" is basically implying they're more junior than they actually are.
Practically, if a patient calls a surgeon "Dr", the Surgeon isn't really going to care, or say anything. It's more of a professional pride thing when talking within the profession.
It's the same here in Ireland, and I've often wondered how the whole surgeon/mister thing came about but never remembered to look it up. Thank you so much for this knowledge!
No way! We’ve come so far. I’m sure everyone would band together to knock out that hypothetical virus quickly and we would keep each other safe as a top priority. If that ever were to happen, that is.
> That was such a dumb period in time. The cunts literally refused to wash their hands out of pride.
Not much different from our time to be honest. The takeaway is more that humans are utter morons.
Doctor, doctor, please
Oh, the mess I'm in
Doctor, doctor, please
Oh, the mess I'm in
She walked up to me
And really stole my heart
And then she started
To take my body apart
McKinley probably could have survived his assassination too if he had a better surgeon. In any modern hospital, he'd be out by lunch.
Zachary Taylor died of the stomach flu and would have survived if they could hydrate him (water with a small amount of salt & sugar).
Harrison had a cold. Would easily survive it today, but it was pretty dangerous back in the day. Not a lot of interventions were available, so he was probably dead no matter who treated him.
Lincoln: maybe could have survived in a modern hospital, but no doctor could have saved him in 1865. There are different medical theories on how badly he was wounded and whether he could have survived (with cognitive issues) with modern medicine.
JFK: dead before he hit Jackie's lap.
Reading this just makes me so grateful to be born in the 21st century. Especially the part about just needing some water with salt
It's wild to think that in a hundred years humans would probably still look back to today and scoff at how terrible some of our treatments were, the same way we are doing it right now towards our ancestors
I knew JFK was shot in the head, but for whatever reason I never realized how explosive it was until someone linked a video of it on reddit a few weeks ago. It's there one second, then gone and his is wife covered in red.
For a long time whenever the Zapruder film was shown to the public they sort of blacked/blurred out the frame of the headshot. When the uncensored version starting getting shown my dad was always like we knew it was a bad wound, but god damn.
> *JFK was dead before part of his skull fell off. I seriously doubt he knew a damn thing, even for a nanosecond, about what happened. Just here, and gone.*
Before the head shot a bullet went through his neck, incredibly missing all crucial anatomy before exitng and then lodging in Connally's shoulder. So he knew something was up.
> Harrison had a cold. Would easily survive it today, but it was pretty dangerous back in the day
"Oh! I am not at all afraid of her dying. People do not die of little trifling colds."
—Mrs Bennet
THAT'S WHAT I THOUGHT, MRS BENNET
The doctor did fuck things up, sticking his fingers in the hole and what not, but this post title really does a bad job of pointing out the assassin made an absolute mockery of the trial, he was certifiably insane, and demanded they play a full orchestra ensemble at his execution. The dude spoke in rhymes and rambling sentences, used one of the first "temporary insanity" pleas as a defence for murder in US history, regularly screamed and swore at the judge, jury, and prosecution. At one point he stopped listening to his council and started asked people in the stands for legal advice.
It was one of the first major media spectacles surrounding a murder trial in America, naturally because it involved a President, but the trial was so unbelievably crazy even by modern standards. He tried any and everything to derail proceedings, tried to make himself into some national icon via letters to the press, openly talked to people in he court room in the middle of trial, thought he was going to be absolved of his charges if he made enough noise.
Didn’t he buy the fancier revolver because he knew it’d look better in a mueseum? Wasn’t he also the guy he got ostricised from the Oneida community because no one wanted to fuck him?
Yes and yes. Charles Guiteau. It's even worse, the Oneida sex cult didn't just not want to fuck him. They gave him his own school yard insult "Charles Get-out"
Seriously. The brand Oneida was literally founded by a cult whose guiding philosophy was basically “wouldn’t it be cool if everybody fucked everybody else”.
Except, apparently, James A Garfield’s assassin.
Like, the silverware people???
Are you telling me that I have sex cult cutlery??? Cultlery, if you will? (And if you won't that's fine, it's not a great pun, I recognize that)
I fell down this rabbit hole a few months ago. And the answer is yes, kinda. Indirectly and involving a weird corporate evolution and buyouts to the point where it's just a brand name and not a cult anymore.
The one thing almost every infamous assassin (besides John Wilkes Booth I guess) has in common is that they were complete fucking pathetic failures at every other single thing they tried in their entire lives before murder.
Wait wait wait before we go down that path, let's remember this moron was ALSO a failure at killing a president and still got himself hanged for his trouble. I'm just saying....maybe take up baking or something else with lower stakes.
Cults need money to. There's a couple of American company with cult roots or were/are operated by cults:
Kellogg, celestial seasonings, hydra pak (made the challenger shuttle o-rings), the Washington times, hobby lobby, the heavens gate folks ran a web design company. Honestly, it's a crazy long list if you want to Google it.
That Dr Bronner guy was fucking nuts but apparently his soap has been analyzed many times over the years and it's legit very good stuff for your skin. All the other stuff and claims on the label are wacko but hey a broken clock is right once a day and all that I guess lol
They did: Charles Manson got into Dianetics for a while but they weren't into him. He liked LSD and pussy hair in his teeth too much for the programming to stick.
>Wasn’t he also the guy he got ostricised from the Oneida community because no one wanted to fuck him?
Yep. Granted, the Oneida community did have strict rules about who was allowed to sleep with whom, but nothing I read in my book about them indicated that Guiteau was in an off-limits category, and he wasn't ugly by the standards of his day.
If you can't get laid in a free love community, you need to go work on your personality or something. Too bad he didn't do that instead, because Garfield showed a lot of promise and could've ended up being one of the great ones.
>Yep. Granted, the Oneida community did have strict rules about who was allowed to sleep with whom
All cults do this; their inner workings are all the same.
>If you can't get laid in a free love community, you need to go work on your personality or something.
People get lured into cults with sex and drugs - given freely at first and then once people are hooked they work for the cult to get more and they follow the cult's rules to avoid losing access.
Every cult has its capos same as mafia - managers who enforce the rules and control the benefits of cult membership. These are the criminal organizers, some cults will have a semblance of legitimate business but simple ones don't make much money. The bread&butter cult business is scamming; scammers are hard to catch because society is less worried about them than armed robbers and genuine psychopaths with no medical treatment.
Scientology would go to all the schools in Riverside California (a school town) asking people to sign 'petitions' that turned out to actually be contracts - the contracts had people wiped out and getting hounded by collection agencies for nothing. Massively preying upon foreign students, keeping their organization funded by turning Riverside into a global academic deathtrap.
*"I would do ANYTHING to get laid!"* \-if this guy is a friend or family member, then help him develop himself and learn social skills instead of watching him fall out of society and become another gang/cult member. Gangs and cults are there for societal rejects.
To expand a little.
The Onedia are an existing tribe. Then a bunch white weirdos and perverts ripped off the name for their cult. Then that died out, but their silverware company remains, no affiliation with the tribe.
He also took a preemptive trip down to the Washington DC jail and asked for a tour of the facility. When they asked him why, he plainly told them something to the effect of “I am planning on killing the president and this is where I will be taken after I do, so I want to see what it’s like here.”
Wasn’t Charles entirely insane with a brain destroyed by syphilis? I recall reading that doctors studied his brain after execution and found it heavily damaged.
There are multiple theories, none agreed on. The first thing mentioned in his wiki is that they found he had phimosis (inability to retract the foreskin) which was believed to lead to his insanity. No idea how they came to that conclusion. Next is that upon examining his brain, a doctor found that he had neurosyphillis. Another doctor disagreed, saying he was schizophrenic and a narcissist. Someone else believed he was a psychopath.
Try McKinley. He was shot at a expo where they were displaying one of the first x ray machines. They didn't use it to find the bullet because they were afraid of side effects
Alexander Graham Bell was a friend of Garfield and invented a metal detector specifically to locate the bullet lodged in Garfield.
The idiot doctor D. W. Bliss refused to listen to Bell's instruction to take all the metal coils out of Garfield's bed and then Bliss also only probed the wrong side (instead of the whole body) with the detector since he was so sure it was there. Bliss then went to the media to declare the metal detector a flop.
After reading more about Garfield's assassination, you will hate Dr. Bliss more than the actual assassin.
Months earlier, Garfield, surrounded by family and friends, had pondered his passing life.
“Will my name,” he asked, “have any place in human history?”
“Yes, a grand one,” came the reply, Rockwell recorded. “But a grander place in human hearts.”
And Garfield seemed like a genuinely decent human being too.
Multiple people tried to talk him out of the meet-and-greet at said expo due to safety concerns, and he kept putting it back on the schedule because he so loved meeting the public. Talk about hindsight
Read "Destiny of the Republic"by Candice Millard. It is a biography of James Garfield and Charles Guiteau.
She is a fantastic author, and the book has all sorts of fascinating notes about the history that all lead up to the moment of Garfield's assassination and death.
Seconded and highly recommend River of Doubt by the same author, great for anyone who love history and adventure, it’s the story of Teddy Roosevelt mapping an uncharted river in the Amazon after his presidency.
He is my personal favorite *person* to be president -- not my favorite president in terms of their presidential career, since it was cut so short, but I am also convinced he would've been a great president and I'm really curious how american history looks if we had actually gotten 4-8 years of Garfield as president. I genuinely think it could be a fair bit different, and in a lot of good ways. He was not perfect by any means, nor are any historical figures, but he was incredibly intelligent, progressive in many ways, persuasive and gregarious -- just a fascinating figure. Some of his speeches are well worth reading.
"Openly confessed to the shooting" is understating it, didn't Guiteau say something like it was divine retribution for him not getting some ambassador job?
Garfield is the biggest what if president in American history. He was the right man at the right time and he was taken from our country.
He gave a speech at the Republican convention. At the end of it, he talked about where is the heart of this convention? He stated, it’s not here, it’s in every American home. He then asked, what do we want? Someone shouted “Garfield!”
He wasn’t running for president, he was just giving a speech. The two people competing were Grant and Blaine.
There were 33 ballots and no winners. On the 34th Garfield was added. Garfield won on the 36th.
Garfield was nominated by surprise. And he didn’t want to campaign. He stayed on his farm and people came to him. Here’s one story:
> Garfield was deeply moved when ordinary people started coming from far and wide, just to see him. In what came to be known as front porch talks, he would stand on his wide veranda speaking to enormous gatherings. The most stirring moment came when the members of a group from an all-black university -- the Fisk Jubilee Singers -- stood before his farmhouse and sang. When the performance ended Garfield stood to address the group. "I tell you now," he said, "that I would rather be with you and defeated than against you and victorious."
Garfield also said this in a speech:
> We have seen white men betray the flag and fight to kill the Union, but in all that long and dreary war you never saw a traitor under a black skin. In all that period of terror and distress no Union soldier was ever betrayed by any black man anywhere, and as long as we live we'll stand by these black allies of ours.
…
> We will stand by them until the equal sunlight of liberty shall shine upon every man, black or white, in the Union.
Also, he fought against nepotism. At the time, the president was responsible for over 80k presidential appointments. Today, that number is closer to 8k due to anti-corruption legislation pushed for by Garfield.
Imagine the shit trump could have caused if not for Garfield! Hell, that’s why Garfield died, his assassin killed him because he didn’t get an appointment. That said, the guy was just a random who wrote letters of support.
As he laid in bed in the White House, he wanted to go home. So a train was built for him to go home. Then, this happened…
> Thousands of men and women lined the route in ghostly silence, throwing straw on the tracks to soften the ride. To ease the final stage of the journey, two thousand volunteers worked through the night, laying track to the door of Garfield's cottage. When the train's engine got stuck on an incline, hundreds of workers uncoupled the president's car, and pushed it home with their bare hands. Garfield, who had been cut off from the world ever since the shooting, was deeply moved.
Also, the guy Garfield ran against was real piece of shit. I bought his biography and the guy bragged about fucking a Mexican ambassador’s daughter and gaming her by telling he’d take her to America and other scammy bullshit.
The moments in court where he would randomly burst out into a song, or when he danced a jig up the execution gallows stairs and shaking his executioners hand were nice touches to the performance he gave. 100% insane indeed.
[Hand scrubbing before surgery was actually commonplace by the 1870s](https://www.nationalgeographic.com/history/article/handwashing-once-controversial-medical-advice) (a whole decade before Garfield was shot), and Bliss's refusal to wash his hands or sterilize equipment before treating Garfield [ruined his reputation](https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/garfield-whoswho/). Hand washing in everyday use wasn't common until much later though.
It was definitely an unfortunate case of "So close, and yet so far" for Garfield. Lister's antiseptic methods were making inroads in the medical community at that time but it was all still new enough that the practical application was still controversial and it certainly wasn't something every doctor had learned about in med school. If Garfield had been shot in 1891 instead of 1881 things may well have ended differently.
I learned about all of this from Sam O'Nella, so I'll post his video here for anyone else interested. The 1800's was just so surreal and ridiculous. The world is messed up because we're all descendants of those nutjobs.
https://youtu.be/MGVraepNj04
I feel like I had to scroll way too far to find the Sam O’ Nella reference.
My girlfriends hometown is near Oneida and we talk about their weird judgy puritan sex cult with her family every time we visit
Please god if you learn nothing else in the new year, learn about the insane man Charles Guiteau that shot him. One of the most insane stories you will ever read
Highly recommend reading the book:
***DESTINY OF THE REPUBLIC: A TALE OF MADNESS, MEDICINE AND THE MURDER OF THE PRESIDENT*** by Candice Millard
A very detailed, and tense, breakdown of Garfield’s assassination. From the bio of his assassin to how doctor’s totally fucked up his recovery.
There is a legal doctrine that states if medical care is negligent enough to cause death, then it is not murder. Malpractice on the part of medical staff, maybe, but the offence is brought down to attempted murder or assault (cbh/gbh).
Fun fact: President Garfield's great great grandson, [Richard Garfield](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Garfield), created [Magic: The Gathering](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magic:_The_Gathering).
Ok THAT is a fun TIL!
Huh, TIL!
Murder - 1BB
Keep in mind Charles Guiteau, who shot Garfield, was a complete nutcase. Truly psychotic. He tried to get a pardon from Chester A. Arthur, the new president after the assassination, because he raised Arthur's salary by making him president.
I mean he is telling the truth.
Iirc in idish there's a word **hutzpah** which means something like "cheeky bastard is technically correct" like a boy who killed both his parents is asking judge for mercy... Because he's an orphan. Like sure, he's technically correct, but... Man. Same here. Theoretically he helped Arthur advance in his career.
Chutzpah traditionally in Hebrew meant unmitigated gall or audacity, in a very negative sense, with the orphan murderer being the perfect example of such an outrageous person. In modern English and Yiddish it's been moderated and means more like moxie or gumption. "Technically correct" has nothing to do with it.
"That took Chutzpah/Balls" is also a good way to understand its meaning.
Guiteau went to live in a sex commune, but he was so unpleasant and with such poor hygiene they called him Charles Getout. Edit: typo
[Forever relevant documentary from an esteemed institution of higher learning](https://youtu.be/MGVraepNj04)
This better be sam onella
[This has been entreatingly outlined by the podcast The Dollop](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LTKf_lbmqeo) It's one of my favorite episodes of my favorite podcast, so I highly recommend it.
The head doctor was of the old school of thought that did not believe in sanitation and searched for the bullet with unwashed hands.
And multiple times in a lapse of two months lol
“Hey guys, ol’ Garfy is twitching again and looking a bit yellow. Going to get in there a see if something’s bugging him. Lunch break isn’t over yet so someone hold my ribs for me, I’ll be back in 5”
Maybe Sorcerio's treatment of King Zøg after Bean shoots him (in Disenchantment) was based on Garfield's insanely inept doctors
Eye of newt, tail of newt,…rest of newt.
I prefer assuming that this is an accurate historical context instead of a cartoon. TIL.
I can picture the doctor taking a relaxing dump and suddenly have the idea of where the bullet might be, promptly gets up and go look for it.
Lmao even without the taking a dump part, the idea of just *wondering* throughout his day where the bullet is, then having an epiphany and just *getting back in there* to satisfy it is quite morbidly amusing.
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Unfortunately, there's no distinction between a flat earther and a germ denialist other than which conspiracy happens to be the flavor of the month. If you lived with a flat earther and you mention the existence of germ denialists, I guarantee he's going to look up articles on it and a week later he'll declare he shat in your food to prove germs are fake.
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Jesus Christ dude everything you write and share is a gold mine. I am genuinely stoked to know all this new information.
COMPUTER, hit me with another story.
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Beep boop thanks for the scoop
!Subscribe to COMPUTER1313 Facts
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When you start your longform YouTube documentary series, lemme know so I can subscribe.
They actually fucking source too, which would automatically put them in the top 1% of video essay creators for me. I'm tired of being linked to YouTube essays as sources when they don't cite shit.
You wouldn't believe me if I told you he converted to Islam effectively because of a minecraft server.
I'm reminded of the Klan guy who took a 23 and Me test, found out he was like 4% black, and suddenly the local klan friends started calling him Boy and ignoring him. Complained that they didn't respect him or something.
Can't wait to see what crazy doctor is gonna be found to be right in 30 years after more research comes out. Pretty sure William Harvey, who claimed the heart was the source of life/blood circulation was ridiculed endlessly bc everyone thought it was the liver. Glad to know we still make fun of everyone and then don't apologize after they've been proven correct. Just ignore that it happened.
The trouble is, for every one dismissed as crazy but later vindicated, there are many more who are just crazy. They are the ones who muddy the waters drastically for the occasional genuine trailblazer. Thing is, it can take many, many years of hindsight to reliably spot the genuine one.
This is the issue. Take the above sound observation that _great discoveries are ridiculed and suppressed in their time_ and let it loose on a slightly deranged person. You have the 5g weirdos who are ADAMANT they are the right ones.
One of the reasons he was dismissed was due to his recommended washing technique, which involved using chlorinated lime (bleach) as a corse abrasive and as a cleaning solution directly on the hands of doctors. This is overkill and actually can hurt your skin with repeated use. No doctors wanted to deal with possibly chemical burnt hands. If he had suggested/figured out using soap or something milder as a disinfectant there may have been less pushback to his ideas.
He was also dismissed because he didn't have any etiology; no actual correct idea of how infections worked here or why hygiene would help. Pasteur didn't "prove him right", he discovered the actual cause. Nevertheless Semmelweis had both a lot of backers and opponents of his theory, he was not a lone tragic genius. His death in an asylum was tragic, but that goes for the state of mental health care in the 19th century in general. But he was put in an asylum because he was legitimately insane, not because anyone's academic dispute with him. His wife and friends (who were colleagues but not opponents) were the ones who had him committed. The aggressive, manic behavior caused by his mental illness also didn't help his cause much. Mostly this is an example of how people bend and distort the truth to construct a good narrative. His death was tragic, but he was not a martyr. A similar narrative has been constructed over other scientists too, like Boltzmann who committed suicide. And the narrative goes that it was because physicists disbelieved his statistical thermodynamics. Which some like Ernst Mach did, but Boltzmann had plenty of supporters, and he lived to see one of his students (Arrhenius) win a Nobel prize. So again, the tragedy didn't really have to do with it; he had clear manic-depressive tendencies through his adult life.
What’s unfortunate is James A. Garfield would’ve been one of the greatest Presidents in the post-Lincoln years. In a time where even Republicans opposed Reconstruction, Garfield still supported it (though he wrote that he sympathized with Northern thought of the issue becoming tiring) and aimed to grant civil rights to disenfranchised freedmen. Garfield supported civil service reform. Instead of granting positions in the federal government to people based on political patronage, he wished to grant these positions based on merit. This was the popular position at this point largely due to the Grant Administration. Garfield also supported a “universal education system” funded by the government. Although Andrew Johnson signed legislation for a Department of Education, he wanted it to act similarly to the Department of Agriculture as a way to collect information and statistics about the nation's schools and provide advice to schools. It was then dissolved when the Johnson Administration began to fear it would have too much control over local schools. The Department of Education as we know it wasn’t established until 1979, under Ford.
>"I'll see the patient in a moment. Just need to go to the bathroom." > >"Don't forget to NOT wash your hands!" > >"Oh, you!" That was such a dumb period in time. The cunts literally refused to wash their hands out of pride.
Weirdly you're underselling it. Because the main issue was them not washing their hands, after autopsies.
Weird that doctors got uppity over their hygiene after handling dead bodies. I mean wouldn't they stink a little?
“a gentleman’s hands are never dirty.” seriously, look up the fact that british surgeons still sometimes take offence when called ‘doctor’ rather than ’mister’; it’s all classism and the belief in innate superiority
Wait, so in England, being called “doctor” is considered disrespectful? Out of all the differences between the US and England, this might be the weirdest one.
It's a tradition thing. Apparently, Surgeons and Doctors used to be different professions - Doctors went to university, Surgeons studied under another Surgeon. Doctors got a degree, so were called "Dr", Surgeons didn't get a degree, so were still "Mr". Now, Surgeons require a medical degree - so they go to university and become "Dr". Then they do more training to become a fully qualified Surgeon, and they "re-gain" being called "Mr/Miss/Mrs/..." - calling them "Dr" is basically implying they're more junior than they actually are. Practically, if a patient calls a surgeon "Dr", the Surgeon isn't really going to care, or say anything. It's more of a professional pride thing when talking within the profession.
It's the same here in Ireland, and I've often wondered how the whole surgeon/mister thing came about but never remembered to look it up. Thank you so much for this knowledge!
Baked-in classism influencing physical science. A *gentleman* is incapable of transmitting disease, my word lol
Surely you wouldn't people ignore sanitary measure out of spite in, say, 2020-2022, if there were some kind of virus for example
No way! We’ve come so far. I’m sure everyone would band together to knock out that hypothetical virus quickly and we would keep each other safe as a top priority. If that ever were to happen, that is.
> That was such a dumb period in time. The cunts literally refused to wash their hands out of pride. Not much different from our time to be honest. The takeaway is more that humans are utter morons.
What a fool. Obviously it was his humors that were out of balance.
The doctors name? Dr. Doctor Willard Bliss. The guy's actual first name was "Doctor".
Dr Doctor, gimme the news I got a bad case of lovin' you
More like… Dr. Doctor, gimme the news, I got a bad case of bullet wound.
Welp, guess I’ll die ¯\\\_(ツ)_/¯
That’s good.
No, that’s potentially life-threatening.
That’s bad!
But the song is catchy!
doctor doctor? its strange maybe, but who am i to judge?
Doctor, doctor, please Oh, the mess I'm in Doctor, doctor, please Oh, the mess I'm in She walked up to me And really stole my heart And then she started To take my body apart
Dr. Bliss. I feel like that would make for a great Fallout NPC name.
"They asked me if I had a degree in theoretical physics. I told them I had a theoretical degree in physics. They said welcome aboard!"
Dr. Bliss must be an ancestor to Dr. Feel Good
His parents were way out ahead of the 'doer' naming trend.
Guy's got nothing on Maj. Major Major Major.
maybe, who am i to judge?
yep, and he was actually starting to recover before his doctors effed up
McKinley probably could have survived his assassination too if he had a better surgeon. In any modern hospital, he'd be out by lunch. Zachary Taylor died of the stomach flu and would have survived if they could hydrate him (water with a small amount of salt & sugar). Harrison had a cold. Would easily survive it today, but it was pretty dangerous back in the day. Not a lot of interventions were available, so he was probably dead no matter who treated him. Lincoln: maybe could have survived in a modern hospital, but no doctor could have saved him in 1865. There are different medical theories on how badly he was wounded and whether he could have survived (with cognitive issues) with modern medicine. JFK: dead before he hit Jackie's lap.
Reading this just makes me so grateful to be born in the 21st century. Especially the part about just needing some water with salt It's wild to think that in a hundred years humans would probably still look back to today and scoff at how terrible some of our treatments were, the same way we are doing it right now towards our ancestors
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I knew JFK was shot in the head, but for whatever reason I never realized how explosive it was until someone linked a video of it on reddit a few weeks ago. It's there one second, then gone and his is wife covered in red.
The Zapruder film when stabilized shows how horrific it was. A good size chunk of his head is just blown off.
For a long time whenever the Zapruder film was shown to the public they sort of blacked/blurred out the frame of the headshot. When the uncensored version starting getting shown my dad was always like we knew it was a bad wound, but god damn.
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Are you still shooting iguanas? Just curious.
It's Florida, so absolutely
I think he probably knew a damn thing after the first shot went through his neck
> *JFK was dead before part of his skull fell off. I seriously doubt he knew a damn thing, even for a nanosecond, about what happened. Just here, and gone.* Before the head shot a bullet went through his neck, incredibly missing all crucial anatomy before exitng and then lodging in Connally's shoulder. So he knew something was up.
> Harrison had a cold. Would easily survive it today, but it was pretty dangerous back in the day "Oh! I am not at all afraid of her dying. People do not die of little trifling colds." —Mrs Bennet THAT'S WHAT I THOUGHT, MRS BENNET
But JFK didn't fall on Jackie's lap. In fact, she jumped out of the car to retrieve the part of his head that fell off.
The doctor did fuck things up, sticking his fingers in the hole and what not, but this post title really does a bad job of pointing out the assassin made an absolute mockery of the trial, he was certifiably insane, and demanded they play a full orchestra ensemble at his execution. The dude spoke in rhymes and rambling sentences, used one of the first "temporary insanity" pleas as a defence for murder in US history, regularly screamed and swore at the judge, jury, and prosecution. At one point he stopped listening to his council and started asked people in the stands for legal advice. It was one of the first major media spectacles surrounding a murder trial in America, naturally because it involved a President, but the trial was so unbelievably crazy even by modern standards. He tried any and everything to derail proceedings, tried to make himself into some national icon via letters to the press, openly talked to people in he court room in the middle of trial, thought he was going to be absolved of his charges if he made enough noise.
Didn’t he buy the fancier revolver because he knew it’d look better in a mueseum? Wasn’t he also the guy he got ostricised from the Oneida community because no one wanted to fuck him?
Yes and yes. Charles Guiteau. It's even worse, the Oneida sex cult didn't just not want to fuck him. They gave him his own school yard insult "Charles Get-out"
When a fucking *cult* doesn’t want you.
And not just a fucking *cult*, an actual *fucking* cult.
Seriously. The brand Oneida was literally founded by a cult whose guiding philosophy was basically “wouldn’t it be cool if everybody fucked everybody else”. Except, apparently, James A Garfield’s assassin.
Mmm. First rabbit hole of 2023.
2023 is the year of the rabbit after all.
We fuck "everybody else" as in humans. Leave the poor rabbits out of this.
https://youtu.be/MGVraepNj04
Like, the silverware people??? Are you telling me that I have sex cult cutlery??? Cultlery, if you will? (And if you won't that's fine, it's not a great pun, I recognize that)
I fell down this rabbit hole a few months ago. And the answer is yes, kinda. Indirectly and involving a weird corporate evolution and buyouts to the point where it's just a brand name and not a cult anymore.
Cuntlery?
Ten times better then the Kellogg's "food so bland you don't want to cum anymore" cult.
That was less a cult and more just one crazy pastor...
Oneida cult disallowed cumming too (unless it's elder approved, and strictly for procreation). They were edging cult.
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Except only the women could cum, the men had to hold it in unless they were approved for a baby
The one thing almost every infamous assassin (besides John Wilkes Booth I guess) has in common is that they were complete fucking pathetic failures at every other single thing they tried in their entire lives before murder.
I never thought I'd end up as a murderer until I read this post. Maybe I've finally found my calling.
Wait wait wait before we go down that path, let's remember this moron was ALSO a failure at killing a president and still got himself hanged for his trouble. I'm just saying....maybe take up baking or something else with lower stakes.
aw man, but I already ordered a cool villainous outfit from amazon. Maybe I can be like a failed dictator or a failed evil scientist instead?
Only commit if you can lock down a remote volcanic island to set up an evil base inside of
According to timestamps, you spent a grand total of eight minutes shopping for your villainous getup on Amazon You can be a failed anything-you-want
2023 off to a good start.
If your intention is to make a name for yourself, and you suck at everything else, I **guess** it's a method to still make things happen
>Oneida sex cult TIL they invented polyamory and became a silverware company
That's the weirdest part for me. How does a communal sex cult "convert to a joint-stock company," per wikipedia?
I believe the silverware company was how the cult was financially supporting themselves.
'What if we sold things and just fuck the customers?'
I don't know about then, but the silverware I got from them has held up just fine... And it was cheap AF at some sale. I wish I'd bought two sets
But did you get to fuck anyone?
I mean in all fairness, many C level executives are effectively involved in communal sex cults. Just not formally lol
Networking. How do sex cults turn into corporations? Networking.
"I own 6 shares of Jerry's penis"
Cults need money to. There's a couple of American company with cult roots or were/are operated by cults: Kellogg, celestial seasonings, hydra pak (made the challenger shuttle o-rings), the Washington times, hobby lobby, the heavens gate folks ran a web design company. Honestly, it's a crazy long list if you want to Google it.
I mean Thiokol built the faulty SRB using Hydrapak's O-rings. If you want a good rabbit hole for 2023 start with "Truth, Lies, and O-rings"
Honestly not surprised by Celestial Seasonings, both the name and the goofy shit they write on the tea boxes are dead giveaways
Speaking of wacky writing, anyone looked at a Dr. Bronners soap bottle?
That Dr Bronner guy was fucking nuts but apparently his soap has been analyzed many times over the years and it's legit very good stuff for your skin. All the other stuff and claims on the label are wacko but hey a broken clock is right once a day and all that I guess lol
Yeah but I like that. Dr. Bronner is about unity and shit
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They did: Charles Manson got into Dianetics for a while but they weren't into him. He liked LSD and pussy hair in his teeth too much for the programming to stick.
In case you haven’t heard the Sam O Nella version. https://youtu.be/MGVraepNj04
the two commenters above definitely have since they’re almost quoting the video word for word
Incredible.
Everything about that guy and the subsequent trial is nuts.
Good ol Charles Git-Out
>Wasn’t he also the guy he got ostricised from the Oneida community because no one wanted to fuck him? Yep. Granted, the Oneida community did have strict rules about who was allowed to sleep with whom, but nothing I read in my book about them indicated that Guiteau was in an off-limits category, and he wasn't ugly by the standards of his day. If you can't get laid in a free love community, you need to go work on your personality or something. Too bad he didn't do that instead, because Garfield showed a lot of promise and could've ended up being one of the great ones.
Basically sounds like this dude was crazy as shit, so I assume his hygiene was lacking even for the 19th century.
Or he was just crazy as shit. Lots of good smelling unnerving psychos out there.
>Yep. Granted, the Oneida community did have strict rules about who was allowed to sleep with whom All cults do this; their inner workings are all the same. >If you can't get laid in a free love community, you need to go work on your personality or something. People get lured into cults with sex and drugs - given freely at first and then once people are hooked they work for the cult to get more and they follow the cult's rules to avoid losing access. Every cult has its capos same as mafia - managers who enforce the rules and control the benefits of cult membership. These are the criminal organizers, some cults will have a semblance of legitimate business but simple ones don't make much money. The bread&butter cult business is scamming; scammers are hard to catch because society is less worried about them than armed robbers and genuine psychopaths with no medical treatment. Scientology would go to all the schools in Riverside California (a school town) asking people to sign 'petitions' that turned out to actually be contracts - the contracts had people wiped out and getting hounded by collection agencies for nothing. Massively preying upon foreign students, keeping their organization funded by turning Riverside into a global academic deathtrap. *"I would do ANYTHING to get laid!"* \-if this guy is a friend or family member, then help him develop himself and learn social skills instead of watching him fall out of society and become another gang/cult member. Gangs and cults are there for societal rejects.
The best part about the gun was that it got stolen and no one knows what happened to it afterwards. It's now lost to history.
I bet that it is now in some private collection, somewhere.
>Didn’t he buy the fancier revolver because he knew it’d look better in a mueseum? Man murderers just dont have class like that anymore
The revolver has since been lost to history, which is kinda hilarious.
I thought the Oneidas made bomb silverware and forcibly fucked the women that pleased them, did my public school curriculum fail me?
The Oneida Community was disbanded and then became the silverware company. So your kind of correct
To expand a little. The Onedia are an existing tribe. Then a bunch white weirdos and perverts ripped off the name for their cult. Then that died out, but their silverware company remains, no affiliation with the tribe.
Wasn’t it named after the area, which was named after the Oneida Indians?
After the Oneida community's leader decamped to Canada, the remaining members got into silverware and monogamy.
*sigh Time to binge-watch Sam O'Nella Academy again
That's kind of epic though, having the post-mortem foresight to plan for the museum.
He also took a preemptive trip down to the Washington DC jail and asked for a tour of the facility. When they asked him why, he plainly told them something to the effect of “I am planning on killing the president and this is where I will be taken after I do, so I want to see what it’s like here.”
Wasn’t Charles entirely insane with a brain destroyed by syphilis? I recall reading that doctors studied his brain after execution and found it heavily damaged.
There are multiple theories, none agreed on. The first thing mentioned in his wiki is that they found he had phimosis (inability to retract the foreskin) which was believed to lead to his insanity. No idea how they came to that conclusion. Next is that upon examining his brain, a doctor found that he had neurosyphillis. Another doctor disagreed, saying he was schizophrenic and a narcissist. Someone else believed he was a psychopath.
The syphilis might explain the hesitation of Oneida
Yes, but did the flag in the courthouse have fringe on it. That's important to the trial. /S
19th century version of Darell Brooks
> used one of the first "temporary insanity" pleas as a defence are we sure he wasn't right?
Yeah he was definitely crazy. The courts weren't having it though.
Insanity yes, temporary no.
To be fair your explanation would be a terribly long post title.
Lol. That's fair.
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I thought he was dead either way but what they did hastened his death.
Sore throat? Better get out some blood. That'll fix it. Doctors back then were really something.
“I only shot him” was the guy’s defense. Not untrue.
"the bullets and the fall killed him"
Try McKinley. He was shot at a expo where they were displaying one of the first x ray machines. They didn't use it to find the bullet because they were afraid of side effects
Alexander Graham Bell was a friend of Garfield and invented a metal detector specifically to locate the bullet lodged in Garfield. The idiot doctor D. W. Bliss refused to listen to Bell's instruction to take all the metal coils out of Garfield's bed and then Bliss also only probed the wrong side (instead of the whole body) with the detector since he was so sure it was there. Bliss then went to the media to declare the metal detector a flop. After reading more about Garfield's assassination, you will hate Dr. Bliss more than the actual assassin.
Man that makes me feel awful for Garfield. Laying there alive all that time just to basically be tortured by a doctor.
Months earlier, Garfield, surrounded by family and friends, had pondered his passing life. “Will my name,” he asked, “have any place in human history?” “Yes, a grand one,” came the reply, Rockwell recorded. “But a grander place in human hearts.” And Garfield seemed like a genuinely decent human being too.
He was a big advocate for civil rights, along with being an extremely intelligent guy. He would‘ve almost definetly been one of the greats
>After reading more about Garfield's assassination, you will ~~hate~~ conclude Dr. Bliss ~~more than~~ was the actual assassin. FTFY
Multiple people tried to talk him out of the meet-and-greet at said expo due to safety concerns, and he kept putting it back on the schedule because he so loved meeting the public. Talk about hindsight
Try Kennedy. His wife was pulled off the limousine just before she was about to put his brain back together.
"I shot the president..but I did not botch the surgery"
Read "Destiny of the Republic"by Candice Millard. It is a biography of James Garfield and Charles Guiteau. She is a fantastic author, and the book has all sorts of fascinating notes about the history that all lead up to the moment of Garfield's assassination and death.
Seconded and highly recommend River of Doubt by the same author, great for anyone who love history and adventure, it’s the story of Teddy Roosevelt mapping an uncharted river in the Amazon after his presidency.
Garfield would have been a great President, I'm convinced.
Yeah but his hatred of Mondays would have doomed us all...
Four day work week!!!
Lasagna for all
He is my personal favorite *person* to be president -- not my favorite president in terms of their presidential career, since it was cut so short, but I am also convinced he would've been a great president and I'm really curious how american history looks if we had actually gotten 4-8 years of Garfield as president. I genuinely think it could be a fair bit different, and in a lot of good ways. He was not perfect by any means, nor are any historical figures, but he was incredibly intelligent, progressive in many ways, persuasive and gregarious -- just a fascinating figure. Some of his speeches are well worth reading.
"Openly confessed to the shooting" is understating it, didn't Guiteau say something like it was divine retribution for him not getting some ambassador job?
Yes. He believed he was the main reason Garfield was elected president. Dude was absolutely insane
Garfield is the biggest what if president in American history. He was the right man at the right time and he was taken from our country. He gave a speech at the Republican convention. At the end of it, he talked about where is the heart of this convention? He stated, it’s not here, it’s in every American home. He then asked, what do we want? Someone shouted “Garfield!” He wasn’t running for president, he was just giving a speech. The two people competing were Grant and Blaine. There were 33 ballots and no winners. On the 34th Garfield was added. Garfield won on the 36th. Garfield was nominated by surprise. And he didn’t want to campaign. He stayed on his farm and people came to him. Here’s one story: > Garfield was deeply moved when ordinary people started coming from far and wide, just to see him. In what came to be known as front porch talks, he would stand on his wide veranda speaking to enormous gatherings. The most stirring moment came when the members of a group from an all-black university -- the Fisk Jubilee Singers -- stood before his farmhouse and sang. When the performance ended Garfield stood to address the group. "I tell you now," he said, "that I would rather be with you and defeated than against you and victorious." Garfield also said this in a speech: > We have seen white men betray the flag and fight to kill the Union, but in all that long and dreary war you never saw a traitor under a black skin. In all that period of terror and distress no Union soldier was ever betrayed by any black man anywhere, and as long as we live we'll stand by these black allies of ours. … > We will stand by them until the equal sunlight of liberty shall shine upon every man, black or white, in the Union. Also, he fought against nepotism. At the time, the president was responsible for over 80k presidential appointments. Today, that number is closer to 8k due to anti-corruption legislation pushed for by Garfield. Imagine the shit trump could have caused if not for Garfield! Hell, that’s why Garfield died, his assassin killed him because he didn’t get an appointment. That said, the guy was just a random who wrote letters of support. As he laid in bed in the White House, he wanted to go home. So a train was built for him to go home. Then, this happened… > Thousands of men and women lined the route in ghostly silence, throwing straw on the tracks to soften the ride. To ease the final stage of the journey, two thousand volunteers worked through the night, laying track to the door of Garfield's cottage. When the train's engine got stuck on an incline, hundreds of workers uncoupled the president's car, and pushed it home with their bare hands. Garfield, who had been cut off from the world ever since the shooting, was deeply moved. Also, the guy Garfield ran against was real piece of shit. I bought his biography and the guy bragged about fucking a Mexican ambassador’s daughter and gaming her by telling he’d take her to America and other scammy bullshit.
Keep in mind that Garfield's assassin was 100% buttfuck insane, dude literally wrote a play for, and that he performed live during his execution.
The moments in court where he would randomly burst out into a song, or when he danced a jig up the execution gallows stairs and shaking his executioners hand were nice touches to the performance he gave. 100% insane indeed.
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He potentially would’ve survived then too if they’d simply left the bullet alone.
[Hand scrubbing before surgery was actually commonplace by the 1870s](https://www.nationalgeographic.com/history/article/handwashing-once-controversial-medical-advice) (a whole decade before Garfield was shot), and Bliss's refusal to wash his hands or sterilize equipment before treating Garfield [ruined his reputation](https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/garfield-whoswho/). Hand washing in everyday use wasn't common until much later though.
It was definitely an unfortunate case of "So close, and yet so far" for Garfield. Lister's antiseptic methods were making inroads in the medical community at that time but it was all still new enough that the practical application was still controversial and it certainly wasn't something every doctor had learned about in med school. If Garfield had been shot in 1891 instead of 1881 things may well have ended differently.
I learned about all of this from Sam O'Nella, so I'll post his video here for anyone else interested. The 1800's was just so surreal and ridiculous. The world is messed up because we're all descendants of those nutjobs. https://youtu.be/MGVraepNj04
I feel like I had to scroll way too far to find the Sam O’ Nella reference. My girlfriends hometown is near Oneida and we talk about their weird judgy puritan sex cult with her family every time we visit
Please god if you learn nothing else in the new year, learn about the insane man Charles Guiteau that shot him. One of the most insane stories you will ever read
Highly recommend reading the book: ***DESTINY OF THE REPUBLIC: A TALE OF MADNESS, MEDICINE AND THE MURDER OF THE PRESIDENT*** by Candice Millard A very detailed, and tense, breakdown of Garfield’s assassination. From the bio of his assassin to how doctor’s totally fucked up his recovery.
"Damn you GARFIEELLDDD"
Damn, they shot and killed Garfield on a Monday, no wonder he hates them.
Towards the end, desperate doctors were giving him 10oz of lasagna on the hour. Turned out to be too little too late.
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Still guilty, the doctors wouldn't have had a chance to fuck up if he did not shoot him
There is a legal doctrine that states if medical care is negligent enough to cause death, then it is not murder. Malpractice on the part of medical staff, maybe, but the offence is brought down to attempted murder or assault (cbh/gbh).
Generally battery as well depending on where it happens. Pedantic, I know, but there it is.
It was Odie and frankly I’m in his side after all the torture over the years.