Thoroughly Modern Davie

I know there are people--a lot of people--who venerate the past.  For them, the glorious past is embodied in figures such as Plato and Aristotle, or Washington and Jefferson, or the apostles of Jesus.  And in each case, these people (usually male people, by the way) are considered to have knowledge, wisdom, and insight that we poor modern folks lack.  And of course, I would never argue that various iconic individuals from our past have nothing to offer--far from it.  But I am arguing that when all is said and done, I'll take more "modern" perspectives on things over ideas that are "ancient" and "traditional," because the fact of the matter is, our forebearers were ignorant in ways that today are simply mind-boggling.

Case in point: I'm reading a fascinating book that was recommended to me by someone in my running group--Destiny of the Republic by Candice Millard.  When I say it's a book chronicling the life and ultimate assassination of President James Garfield in 1881, it's tough to suppress a yawn.  But as one reads on, it's clear that Ms. Millard has chosen an interesting little niche of U.S. history to examine.

For those who weren't around in 1881, President Garfield was shot by a mentally imbalanced man named Charles Guiteau.  As it turns out, Garfield's wounds were not exactly fatal--the one bullet that was lodged in his back, near his pancreas, could have stayed permanently in the deep tissue where it rested and he would have been none the worse for it.  But, since Garfield was the President, and something certainly had to be done (it was the President, after all!), a team of doctors rallied to help in this emergency situation.  And all of them--especially the most vocal of them, a Dr. Bliss--made two tragic mistakes.  First, with both their own bare fingers and various long probes, they tried to extricate the bullet from Garfield's body, unsuccessfully.  But second--and far more disconcerting--in that era, as Millard carefully documents, U.S. physicians were extremely skeptical of the claims being made by a European doctor by the name of Lister.  Since you have heard of Listerine, you probably know where this is going: Dr. Lister had argued passionately at various public and professional meetings that doctors needed to work in an antiseptic environment because of something called GERMS.  But American doctors--most of them, anyway--would have none of it.  At this point, Candice Millard tells the story better than I can (pages 184-185):

"Although five years had passed since Lister presented his case to the Medical Congress at the Centennial Exhibition, many American doctors still dismissed not just his discovery, but even Louis Pasteur's.  They found the notion of 'invisible germs' to be ridiculous, and they refused to even consider the idea that they could be the cause of so much disease and death.  'In order to successfully practice Mr. Lister's Antiseptic Method,' on doctor scoffed, 'it is necessary to believe, or act as if we believed, the atmosphere to be loaded with germs.'"

"Why go to all the trouble that antisepsis required simply to fight something that they could not see and did not believe existed?  Even the editor of the highly respected Medical Record found more to fear than to admire in Lister's theory.  'Judging the future by the past,' he wrote, 'we are likely to be as much ridiculed in the next century for our blind belief in the power of unseen germs, as our forefathers were for faith in the influence of spirits, of certain planets and the like, inducing certain maladies.'"

"Not only did many American doctors not believe in germs, they took pride in the particular brand of filth that defined their profession.  They spoke fondly of the 'good old surgical stink' that pervaded their hospitals and operating rooms, and they resisted making too many concessions even to basic hygiene.  Many surgeons walked directly from the street to the operating room without bothering to change their clothes.  Those who did shrug on a laboratory coat, however, were an even greater danger to their patients.  They looped strands of silk sutures through their button-holes for easy access during surgery, and they refused to change or even wash their coats.  They believed that the thicker the layers of dried blood and pus, black and crumbling as they bent over their patients, the greater the tribute to their years of experience."

"Some physicians felt that Lister's findings simply did not apply to them and their patients.  Doctors who lived and worked in the country, away from the soot and grime of the industrialized cities, argued that their air was so pure they did not need antisepsis.  They preferred, moreover, to rely on their own methods of treatment, which not infrequently involved applying a hot poultice of cow manure to an open wound."


Again, the result of all this ignorance was the death of President Garfield from infections that could have easily been avoided.  Just imagine that this sort of mindset was prominent in our medical community less than a century and a half ago!  And you wonder why I have my reservations about the "founding fathers," or Cicero, or the Apostle Paul?  Yes, we continue to have our blind spots and make our mistakes.  And yes, truth is hard to come by.  But I'm grateful to be living in 2012--a year in which we believe in germs and lots of other crazy things such as carbon dating, genetic testing, the theories of evolution and relativity, what is a "normal" sexual orientation, anesthesia, x-rays, and a host of other ideas that--despite our ancestors' best intentions--were simply not on their radar.  (Oh, that's right--they didn't have radar back then!)