William McKinley was the twenty-fifth president of the United States. A veteran of the Civil War, he occupied the White House for just four years. On September 6, 1901, he was shot twice at point-blank range by anarchist Leon Czolgosz during the Pan-American Exposition held in Buffalo (New York). Eight days later he died of generalized sepsis.
More than a century after his death, McKinley’s case is back in the news after a series of unpublished texts were discovered, including the original autopsy report and notes from the examination of the president’s body, a treasure historical that no one knew existed and that kept a strange secret.
Dr. Herman Matzinger was the one who performed the analysis on the American president along with doctor Harvey Gaylord and his conclusion was that neither the infection nor the poison had influenced the death of the American president, as he left in writing.
The compilation of papers, valued at around 73,500 euros ($80,000), had remained in the hands of the surgeon’s family, but has just been acquired by the Raab Collection, an auction house specializing in historical documents.
Matzinger was a respected New York professional who focused on bacteriological analysis using samples from the wound site, gun, and bullets sent to him. After two weeks of investigation (September 14 to 30, 1901), he sent his precise report to his colleagues.
As the typewritten original indicates, the “significant absence of known pathogenic bacteria, particularly in the necrotic cavity, justifies the conclusion that bacterial infection was not a factor in producing the conditions found at autopsy.” In other words, any infection developed later, as a result of the trauma and complications of the shooting.
The text, however, provides more details and reveals the unorthodox experiments that Matzinger carried out in which he injected bacterial samples from the president’s wounds into rabbits and a dog. The doctor monitored the dog for a few days and wrote that its body temperature was around 40 degrees Celsius, which is above average for this type of animal.
There was also no evidence of poison, a point that some doctors had pointed out in the days following McKinley’s death, indicating that the bullets could be impregnated with some lethal substance. Other experts, however, criticized the medical treatment that the American president received on site.
On September 6, 1901, Leon Czolgosz approached William McKinley during the Pan American Exposition. The president, believing that he was in the presence of an admirer, extended his hand, but the anarchist of Polish origin (born in the state of Michigan) despised it, drew his revolver and fired.
The first bullet ricocheted off a button on the victim’s jacket but the second entered his abdomen and passed through the front and back walls of his stomach. He was rushed to the nearest hospital, where gynecological surgeon Matthew Mann quickly operated on him to try to save his life.
The initial surgery appeared successful, even though Mann left the bullet inside and did not properly clean and close the wound. However, McKinley’s health soon began to deteriorate and he died on September 14, becoming the third president to be assassinated in American history after Abraham Lincoln and James A. Garfield (the fourth being John Fitzgerald Kennedy).
The 25th president of the United States is now believed to have died from a subsequent infection that developed along the bullet’s path and around the pancreas, a condition that would not have been caused by the botched surgery and was almost impossible to treat at that time.
“(These documents) give us a fascinating new view of an important moment in American history, with the nation grieving and demanding answers about a fallen president,” notes Nathan Raab, president of the Raab Collection.
