As a tour guide in this city, there are stories that I tend to tell a lot: The stories of the building of the monuments and buildings; the burning of Washington; how Arlington Cemetery came to be; etc, etc. There are some stories that I don’t get a chance to tell that often, mainly because I want my tours to be 3 or 4 hours —not days— long. This story is one I only get to pull out when my tourees are deeply interested in the history of the Capitol and the story of those who built it. This is a pity because it is a good one. It is also one I have written before, but I figure Labor Day is as good a day as any for a rerun.
William Thornton (pic) is best known as the original architect of the Capitol — as well as George Washington’s houses on Capitol Hill. Those who point out that his plans were not actually very good, like to mention that he was, in fact, a doctor. This is true, to an extent. What is also true is that he wasn’t much of a doctor.
After George Washington fell sick with the sore throat that would eventually kill him, Thornton made the pilgrimage to Mount Vernon, figuring he could relieve Washington’s suffering though a tracheotomy. Given what we know now about the general’s illness, this might actually have worked – had Washington been alive. Unfortunately, Thornton arrived to find that the general had passed on and had, in fact, been frozen. Thornton was unfazed. His response was as follows (and understand that this was not written by some appalled bystander, but – proudly – by Thornton himself many years after the incident)
I proposed to attempt his restoration, in the following manner. First to thaw him in cold water, then to lay him in blankets, and by degrees and by friction to give him warmth, and to put into activity the minute blood vessels, at the same time to open a passage to the lungs by the trachæa, and to inflate them with air, to produce an artificial respiration, and to transfuse blood into him from a lamb.
Martha Washington demurred, and the good doctor retired from the scene.
This was not, however, Thornton’s last attempt to make Washington immortal. His next effort was a refashioning of the rotunda of the Capitol, adding a round hole in the middle so that those visiting the rotunda could gaze down onto Washington’s grave. Once again, Martha Washington intervened, and the father of our country was buried, as he had requested, at Mount Vernon.
One of Thornton’s original drawings for the Capitol. The dome as seen here was never built. (LOC)
The hole in the rotunda was, in fact, built in the 1820s, but was closed in 1828 when it was discovered that the damp drafts from the crypt harmed the pictures hung in the rotunda.
Thornton himself went on to become the chief of the patent office. In 1814, while two of his creations were being burned on Capitol Hill, he convinced the British tasked with the burning of the Patent Office to desist, as the models displayed within were not publicly, but privately owned.