President McKinley’s Death

IT would be futile to condemn the murderous attack made on Mr. McKinley, President of the United States, at the Pan-American Exhibition, in Buffalo, on the 6th ult. A political assassination does, occasionally, present redeeming features. The assault made by Czolgosz is bereft of any exculpatory significance, and seems to have been actuated by a cruel determination on the part of the murderer to kill the beloved ruler of a free people simply because he was a ruler; to exhibit the dastardly selfishness and inane inconsequence of anarchy, which glories in defying divine and human laws.
     Turning aside from the unlovely aspect of a human being [300][301] devoted to diabolism, the true men of every land might feel a deep sense of satisfaction in the surgical procedure, which so promptly ensued in the Emergency Hospital of the Pan-American Exhibition. The distinguished victim of anarchistic inhumanity was, almost immediately after the attempt, made the beneficiary of an art which aims at undoing the worst that murderous violence can do. Wounded severely by a malicious creature in the form of a man, one who probably had not enough intelligence to understand the mechanism of the weapon he used, President McKinley had the highest resources of surgical skill placed at his service to restore the lacerated tissues into a semblance of their natural continuity, and to prevent, as far as could be, the direful consequences of traumatism and bacterial invasion.
     Floreat Medicina! May she ever be, as she is and has been, the truest friend and sweetest solace of outraged, injured, suffering humanity!
     Although well planned and skilfully [sic] performed, the operation done to save the President’s life, unfortunately, proved unavailing. President McKinley expired on the morning of the 14th ult., his death, as revealed at the autopsy, being due to traumatic gangrene. Owing to advancing age and weakness, the wounded tissues of the body failed to respond with the reparative effort required of them—an effort which might have proved too great even for the powers of a younger and stronger man.