As I write, the temperature outside is 109 degrees; it’s the third day of all-time record-breaking heat. Global Warming is obvious, the scientific consensus agrees, but we in America don’t. It’s not the first time…

CBS Sunday Morning did a wonderful piece on the assassination of Pres. John Garfield. An assassin shot him, but the doctors killed him:

American doctors at the time didn’t believe germs existed at all. And according to Dr. Jeffrey Reznick of the National Library of Medicine, they rejected the use of antiseptics pioneered by British surgeon Joseph Lister, for whom Listerine would later be named

“Lister, an Englishman, embraced this theory in the early 1860s,” said Reznick. “American doctors did not believe in the Listerian Theory because they subscribed to the miasma theory, the fact that bad air caused disease and illness, not germs. They didn’t believe in germs – germs you couldn’t see.” …

“So President Garfield didn’t have to die,” said Dr. Reznick. “President Garfield died because of what his doctors did to him, and what his doctors DIDN’T do to him.”

Agree with me or not on the global warming swipe, the piece is well worth reading.