Washington Bled to death. Will History Repeat Once More?

In December, 1799 at the age of 67 retired President George Washington was riding his property, inspecting and marking trees to be cut. Washington was reportedly still in fine health, a physically strong and strong willed man, full of vigor.

While he rode the weather changed, and he continued to ride in rain and snow and freezing temperatures. From his own diary of the day he reports:

Morning cloudy, wind at northeast and mercury at 33. A large circle around the moon last night. About 10:00 it began to snow, soon after hail and then a settled rain. Mercury at 28 at night

He returned home, retaining his wet, cold clothing.  He grew hoarse, his throat raw and irritated. That night he awoke, feeling ill. The following morning he instructed his aide to ‘bleed him’ a procedure common at the time, and one which Mr. Washington believed would help relieve his distress. At Washington’s directions, his aide removed somewhere less than a pint of blood from the great man’s vein.

During the next days several physicians attended President Washington, continuing to follow the practice of bloodletting attempting to rid him of the affliction which weakened Mr. Washington. Sources put the amount to be in the range of  5-7 pints of blood removed from his body.

One of the physicians attending to the former president proposed:

that the President’s worsening respiratory condition made it imperative that his trachea be perforated. This newly described procedure, attempted as a last therapeutic resort, had been reported to save the lives of patients in extremis. Both Drs Craik and Brown decided against permitting Dr Dick to perform this procedure even though the latter assured them that he would assume all responsibility in case of unfavorable outcome. Dr Dick subsequently noted in a personal correspondence: “I proposed to perforate the trachea as a means of prolonging life and of affording time for the removal of the obstruction to respiration in the larynx which manifestly threatened speedy resolution.”

Accompanied by various poultices and applications of salves, the medical treatment was unhelpful. George Washington died December 14, 1799. There has been much written analyzing the medical treatment.  Practices which seem barbaric to us were commonplace at the time.  However there is a general consensus that Mr. Washington succumbed to asphyxiation from a throat infection, and his condition was severely weakened by the shock of removing nearly half his blood at the same time.  Speculation abounds that had he not been bled, he may have survived the infection. To any modern medical observer, in fact to just about any layman, the practice of removing blood seems wholly dangerous.

In the spring of 2008 the United States began to suffer from economic crises. The bloated housing market was beginning to collapse, creating a ripple throughout the economy in ways unexpected by government economic experts.  As the ‘housing crisis’ worsened, it infected the financial markets, causing investment companies, insurance firms and banks to shudder and those which were weakest began to collapse. The US Treasury and the Federal Reserve formulated a plan, and began to print more and more money,pumping funds into the economy, lending it to various struggling financial industry powerhouses. Despite running near record budget deficits, the US Government borrowed more and more money to finance the expansion of government aid to weakened companies.

As the Bush administration exited, the Obama administration entered the scene. Looking at what had been done Obama, and his Treasury Secretary decided that not enough had been done. (The Treasury Secretary had been a principle architect of the first bailout) The economy continued to stumble, growing weaker and weaker. This was the justification for much more bailout on an amplified scale. The Obama Administration ran up current budget deficits which dwarfed all previous such overspending. In his first proposed budget Mr. Obama has,in one year, exceeded the deficit spending of the previous SEVEN years of the Bush administration. His proposed deficit spending in fact will eclipse that of all previous administrations combined from G Washington to GW Bush.

Such inflationary spending will sap the energy of the US as surely as the bloodletting did of George Washington. Rather than look at the facts, the government is merely following outdated, and dangerous economic treatments. Continuing to run such deficits and expanding the debt in a time of global economic weakness is not far from continuing to bleed the president, while newer treatments, such as  surgical opening the trachea could save him. Solidifying the currency rather than draining the lifeblood would be a better prescription.

Make no mistake, our economy is dangerously weak. The remedies being applied are akin to continued bleeding. We continue to manufacture currency with nothing to back it. As more and more money is printed, the fiat currency in circulation becomes more and more diluted, essentially valueless. The inflationary policies of the Federal Reserve, abetted by the US Treasury department’s  continued profligate spending on various ‘bailout’ and ‘stimulus’ packages weaken the economic body of the nation to the point where we will be unable to sustain ourselves. The continued selling of federal debt to foreign nations will choke us off as surely as an infected trachea choked George Washington.  Inflationary currency practices drain the lifeblood of the economy.  We are being bled to death while we choke on the political schemes of Obama and his allies as they attempt to fundamentally change the nature of our Republic.

The danger is carefully hidden from view, and shrouded in deception. Evan as unemployment continues to rise ( Remember the promise that if we enacted the ‘stimulus bill’ we would not see unemployment rise over 8%?) we are told that things are somehow improving. Look at reports today. The headline on a CNN report reads as follows:

Job market shows some improvement

While the actual text of the story reads this way:

The pace of U.S. job losses has slowed but the labor market is expected to remain weak, according to reports released Wednesday.

Automatic Data Processing, a payroll-processing firm, said private-sector employers cut 473,000 jobs in June, a 2.5% improvement from the revised 485,000 drop in May.

The June job cut total was more than expected. Economists surveyed by Briefing.com had forecast a loss of 394,000 jobs last month.

Don’t worry, all the blood being lost is a good thing, really.

I don’t know about you, but I think it’s time to find another doctor. Time for Obama and his crew in congress to stop before we die from all this helpful treatment they are giving us. Perhaps a tracheotomy,rather than bleeding, might have saved George Washington. Perhaps a sound dollar, based on something real rather than fiat currency, will save the American Economy. We can at least attempt it. Uncle Sam grows pale from his blood loss as we watch.

Keep the Faith

The Rev

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Significant information regarding the treatment and death of George Washington was obtained from the following:

A Moment in Time The Asphyxiating and Exsanguinating Death of President George Washington http://xnet.kp.org/permanentejournal/spring04/time.html