Evening Republican, Volume 21, Number 60, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 20 March 1918 — Washington’s Death Was Caused From Diphtheria According to Physicians [ARTICLE]

Washington’s Death Was Caused From Diphtheria According to Physicians

In most histories it is stated that George Washington died from pneumonia or quinsy, but Dr. J. A. Nydegger of the United States public health service sends to the Medical Record a letter written by Dr. Cullen Dick of Alexandria, Va., on January 10, 1800, which shows that “he undoubtedly died of diphtheria.” The letter recounts the circumstances of Washington’s last hours, the consultations of the physicians in attendance, of whom Doctor Dick, the writer of the letter, was one, and tells how Dick urged that the sufferer’s trachea (windpipe) be cut open so as to permit him to breathe. The other doctors would not consent to this. They had bled their august patient in vain, and not even give a name to the disease from which he was dying. It appears that Doctor Dick was reluctant to acknowledge that there had been an outbreak of croup in Alexandria, and he would use only the term “Inflammatory quinsy” for that with which Washington was afflicted. Doctor Dick’s description of the disease, to w’hich he proposed to give the name “cynanche laryngea,” was one of diphtheria; he did not use that word perhaps because it had not yet been invented.