Timothy Birdnow

CNN yucks it up about the death of President Zachary Taylor.

Taylor had been elected just a few months prior to this. The former hero of the Mexican war was elderly and it was very hot that day. Taylor went to the Fourth of July celebration in a heavy coat (as was often the custom in those days) and his military uniform.

He had eaten cherries earlier but had not drank any water. When he suffered heat exhaustion his staff called in the doctor. Now, in those days doctors were pretty lame and his physician thought it was because old Zach was too frail and he needed to be built up, so he made the President drink lots of milk, when he needed water and to rest in the shade. His heat exhaustion began moving into heat stroke so the dimwitted doc decided to let Taylor's blood "to get rid of the poison". So they drained blood out of a man who desperately needed water and to cool down - and he died.

I have no doubt the host on CNN was wishing the same would happen to Donald Trump.

At any rate this story illustrates just how much we've learned since the nineteenth century, and it also shows the value of air conditioning. Our President will never die of heat stroke in these modern times! The late Pope Francis called air conditioning a terrible thing, bordering on sinful, and Europeans heeded his call to abolish it and are now dying literally and figuratively because they got rid of it. Had Zachary Taylor had just a window unit he would have survived.

It would have been interesting to see what kind of President Taylor would have been.

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