It probably wouldn’t have been a big deal if Tyler had been a loyal Whig. But not only was he really, after all, a Virginia Democrat who differed with the Whig party’s principles in important ways, but he started doing something earlier presidents had generally not done: vetoing bills passed by Congress because he didn’t like them.

Congressional Whigs were livid, and came very close to mustering the votes to impeach Tyler. They refused to call him the president, referring to him as the acting president – or “His Accidency.”

No one I asked knew any of this. Nor did they know that our fifth president, James Monroe, had been elected in 1816 and 1820 and served his two terms in full, the last president before Reagan to be elected in a year ending in zero and survive to the end of his elected tenure.

So I did not expect anyone to respond to my initial question by saying, “James Monroe!” I just wanted to see what they knew of presidential history. Damned little, as it turned out.

Far too few of us show much interest in history in grade school or college, and I’m sure it’s at least partly because there are too few history teachers who make the subject interesting, as some of mine did. This is a terrible shame. American history is fascinating, and studying presidential history is a wonderful way to approach it.

Thomas Carlyle said, “The history of the world is but the biography of great men.” We’ve had forty-three presidents (Grover Cleveland, who served two noncontinuous terms, is counted twice to get to No. 44 for Barack Obama). The history of our nation is most certainly the history of these men, especially if you read the sort of expansive biography – “The Man and His Times” – that is the kind really worth reading.

I tell residents who train at our institution that there is more to learn in the emergency department than medicine. A sense of history is something I hope to give each of them, at least a little bit, by the time they’ve completed the three years I have to influence their lives.

Dr. Solomon teaches emergency medicine to residents at Allegheny General Hospital in Pittsburgh and is Medical Editor in Chief of ACEP News. He is a social critic and political pundit and blogs at www.bobsolomon.blogspot.com.