NEWS OF THE WEEK.
THE hopes excited by the American surgeons, who probably 1 felt the impact of the wish of an entire people, proved delusive. On Friday, September 13th, at 2 o'clock, President McKinley, who on Thursday morning-had been pronounced out of danger," showed signs of collapse, and early on Satur- day morning, after saying " It is God's way. His will be done, not ours," he passed away. An autopsy was immediately held, and it was discovered that the rending passage of the second bullet had set up gangrene along its entire course. The murdered President could not therefore have lived, though the hour of death was undoubtedly hastened by the weakness produced by seven days' want of food, the stomach, stunned as it were by the bullet, refusing to perform its office. No explana- tion is offered of the surgeons' mistaken diagnosis ; and it is difficult to believe that the more experienced among them were not influenced by a desire to break the calamity gradually to the people. In England a similar hope, entertained even by medical men, was largely based, we believe, on reported cases from South Africa, where many soldiers have survived a similar wound. They were not, however, men of fifty-eight, and their wounds were inflicted by the Hauser bullet, hardly larger than a bit of cedar pencil, and remarkable for the way in which it cuts rather than rends the tissues.
