Early in December 1799, Washington contacted a virulent throat infection, believed to have been acute epiglottitis, that made it difficult to swallow and breathe. As Washington slowly choked to death, doctors and a Mount Vernon overseer drained 40 percent of his blood—more than two liters—in a belief that the four bloodlettings would correct an imbalance of the four primary humors—blood, phlegm, yellow bile and black bile—thought to be causing the infection.
Doctors also applied blisters of cantharides, coated his throat with wheat poultices and administered enemas and purgatives until Washington politely requested that the physicians stop their efforts.
Washington Feared Being Buried Alive
At a time when doctors occasionally mistook the comatose for the dead, taphophbia,. The fear of a premature burial—was so pervasive it led to the invention of safety coffins. One model included a string that its occupant could pull to ring an above-ground bell as a signal that they had been mistakenly buried alive.
Washington feared an unintentional live burial as he laid on his deathbed on the evening of December 14, 1799. The founding father’s final instructionto his secretary, Tobias Lear, was to let at least two days pass before the burial of his body
Finally, at 10:20 pm. Saturday Dec. 14, 1799, after suffering through 48 hours of excrutiating pain , George Washington died. He had lived 67 years and 295 daysDR. William Thornton
Born in the British West Indies in 1759, Thornton attended medical school in Scotland before moving to the United States in 1787 and gaining American citizenship. As part t of his studies of the science of sleep, Thornton recorded dozens of reported cases of animals and people who were revived from states of suspended animation after appearing to be dead. He joined the Royal Humane Society, which had been founded in London in 1774 to promote the innovative medical technique of mouth-to-mouth resuscitation first descrived in 1744 by surgeon William Tossack, to restart breathing and heartbeats in apparent drowning victims.
Although he wasn’t Washington’s personal doctor and never practiced medicine after arriving in the United States, Thorton possessed the “fullest confidence of being able to relieve him” by performing an innovative, but extremely rare surgical technique—a tracheotomy.
When Dr. Thornton arrived and stepped inside Mount Vernon’s drawing room, however, he saw family and friends grieving over Washington’s corpse—frozen solid from the frigid temperatures since his death the night before.. The bereaved told a shocked Thornton that he had arrived too late to prevent the former president’s demise.
No, Thornton thought. No, he hadn’t. The brash doctor then startled the mourners by proclaiming that he could bring Washington back to life
Upon his encounter with Washington’s stiff body, Thornton thought back to cases he had read of fish being restored to life after freezing and plotted the late president’s resurrection. He proposed to thaw Washington’s corpse in cold water before warming it with blankets. He would then open a passage to his lungs with a tracheotomy and, as he recalled in the 1820s, “inflate them with air, to produce an artificial respiration.” To compensate for the blood taken from Washington, Thornton’s final step would be to transfuse the patient with lamb’s blood.
“He looks at it not from a religious angle, but a science angle and sees the processes that killed Washington and thinks he can reverse them,” Horn says. Thornton explained his reasoning behind the unorthodox prescription. “He died by the loss of blood and the want of air. Restore these with the heat that had subsequently been deducted, and as the organization was in every respect perfect, there was no doubt in my mind that his restoration was possible.”
The Proposal
- Thawing the body slowly using cold water and friction with blankets.
- Opening the trachea via a tracheotomy to pump air into the lungs.
- Transfusing blood from a lamb into Washington's veins to restart circulation.