First recorded in 1742, “ignorance is bliss” is a poetic phrase that expresses the idea that it is better not to be burdened with painful knowledge one cannot do anything about.  But in 1881, Dr. D W Bliss’s treatment of President Garfield after he was shot in an assassination attempt was so incompetent that some people have twisted the idiom to suggest that Dr. Bliss himself was the very definition of ignorance.

Dr. Bliss was a well-known but not necessarily well-respected doctor in the late 1800’s.  While serving as the Armory Square Hospital’s administrator in 1863, he was arrested for accepting a $500 bribe.  He was also expelled from the District of Columbia Medical Society for his embrace of homeopathy and pushing a preparation called cundarango as a cure for cancer, syphilis, and all chronic blood diseases.  He was later restored, and his earlier transgressions were largely forgotten.

While he had embraced homeopathy, Dr. Bliss rejected another new medical idea being pushed by Dr. Lister that sanitizing hands and equipment could reduce the instances of infection in patients. Therefore, when Bliss examined and treated the President, he did so with unwashed hands and dirty equipment, contributing to Garfield’s eventual death from infection.

His initial probing of the wound was so rough that it horrified Dr. Purvis, the first black physician to treat a U. S. president.  He asked Bliss to stop, but was ignored.  Bliss continued probing the wound in search of the bullet throughout treatment without the use of an anesthetic, ultimately creating a 21-inch wound track that was a foot away from the actual bullet.

Alexander Graham Bell, hearing of the President’s plight, combined his new telephone technology with Simon Newcomb’s induction balance machine to create a machine that could detect the location of a bullet inside a human body.  All tests were successful until Bliss insisted on using the machine himself rather than Bell.  Rather than examine the whole body, he only passed the coils over the part where he falsely believed the bullet to be, while the President was lying on a bed containing metal springs that interfered with the machine.  Bliss deemed Bell’s experiment to be a failure.

Bliss was suspected at the time of negligence and had a public fight with Congress over the bill for his treatment.  Bliss’s reputation never recovered. He is remembered by history as the doctor whose incompetence killed a U.S. President.

Crystal Kelly is a feature writer for Bizarre Bytes with those unusual facts that you only need to know for Trivial Pursuit, Jeopardy, or to stump your in-laws.

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