George Washington died of hypovolemic shock

George Washington died of hypovolemic shock

George Washington died due to being “de-sanguinated” in the parlance of the day. To explain, it is December, 1799, and Washington was on his plantation at Mt. Vernon and had been caught in a storm while riding and got sick. The sickness was a throat infection and caused him to have a fever. To treat the fever he was bled by means of venesection. Most doctors through the late 19th Century operated based on the theory of the humors of the body. It was thought that the body contained four humors. These were black bile, yellow bile, phlegm, and blood. When the body was in balance, you were healthy. When you were sick something had caused the body to be out of balance through overproduction or underproduction of one of the biles. Since the heat of the body is carried by the blood, too much heat was believed to be caused by too much blood. A doctor treated this by cutting a vein using a lancet, fleam, or scarificator. He then got a “copious” flow of blood and drained a pint or so a day until the body temperature lowered. They thought the body contained much more blood than it does. The temperature will come down but the body is dehydrated and the patient dies. That is what happened to Washington.