Surgery was then a hellish ordeal, as the patient gritted his teeth and endured excruciating pain. While the younger Dr. Bard split open the abscess, his father exhorted him to persevere: “Cut away—deeper—deeper still! Don’t be afraid. You see how well he bears it!”3 Tobias Lear claimed that the tumor was “very large and the incision on opening it deep.”4 In all likelihood, the younger Bard excised the mass of infected tissue and scraped away any pus or dead tissue, all of which would have been enormously painful for Washington, who remained unfailingly courteous.
