Make America sick again

IN 1901, US president William McKinley died from gunshot wounds that modern medicine could easily have treated.

Though X-rays had been invented, they were not yet widely available, so McKinley’s medical team were unable to find one of the assassin’s bullets. And the antibiotics that could have prevented the onset of sepsis – McKinley’s ultimate cause of death – would not be discovered for another few decades.

When US President Donald Trump talks about making America great again, this is the period to which he is referring. McKinley was a “strong believer in tariffs”, Trump has remarked, and under his leadership, the United States was “probably the wealthiest” it has been at any point in its history.