MAGIC : The Nocebo Effect

"Yes, I shot him, but his doctors killed him." 

- Charles Guiteau 

INT   JAIL   NIGHT

LITTLE BILL is sitting at a table reading "The Duke of Death". 

English BOB lies, beaten, inside one of the rooms two cells. BEAUCHAMP is sitting in the cell with him.

LITTLE BILL

Boy, they look like real hard cases, Bob. 

Did you  kill all seven of them dead or did you just wing some of 'em?

"I wanna tell ya this - and Brother Jack, I say it publicly - that's when They announced that Magic Johnson had a virus that brings on AIDS, that there were between 5-10,000 black people THAT DAY, that were SO depressed, and SO hurt that they lost The Will to Fight The Virus, and The Virus GOT their ass — in The Depression.

You see, Your Mind has a LOT to do with the willingness of Your Body to let a Virus penetrate the Living Part of your cell.

And so, when you announce that a $25,000,000 a year Black Man is on AZT - which kills ALL of your cells... Not just The Bad Part, it kills The Good Part too - 

Now, that's CONTROLLED DEATH."

" Now, if you've got a Black Man with $25,000,000 in his pocket, can fly ANYWHERE in The Planet to get a remedy, and you got a n**** to stand up and say, 

"I got it. I quit. I'm on AZT."

Then you got yourself A Real FOOL. " 

 Dr. D. Willard Bliss (the 'D' stood for Doctor, his actual first name) - "Bliss was a uniquely arrogant and ambitious man, and he just took charge," Millard said.

There would be no second opinions. For an excruciating 80 days, made even worse by the oppressively hot Washington summer, Garfield suffered stoically as his condition worsened.

"He is riddled with infection at this point, he has these abscesses all through his body," Millard said.

And he was starving to death. Unable to keep down the rich sumptuous meals he was being fed, the president's weight plunged from 210 pounds to 130.

In a panic to find the bullet still lodged in the president, Bliss called on Alexander Graham Bell - yes, THAT Bell, the inventor of the telephone.

Bell's task: Use his "induction balance," a kind of metal detector, to find the bullet so it could be extracted once and for all.

Unbeknownst to Bell, Garfield was lying on a bed made of metal springs, rare at the time - "Which is obviously going to affect a metal detector!" said Millard.

"But worse than that, Bliss had believed - and had publicly stated - that the bullet was on the right side of the president's body. And he would only let Bell examine that part of the president's body. And of course the bullet had gone to the left."

"Willful ignorance?" asked Rocca.

"It's just one of the incredible dangers of ambition. He did not want to be proven wrong."

President Garfield finally died on September 19, 1881.

The autopsy confirmed Bliss' ignorance.

"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."