Two hundred years ago today, on Dec. 14, 1799, the first president of the United States died at the age of 67 in his bed at Mount Vernon. George Washington's doctors said the cause was ''inflammatory quinsy,'' a severe infection of the throat, but to this day controversy has surrounded his death.

That debate -- did Washington die because of medical malpractice? -- is vividly evoked, though not resolved, in an article in the current issue of The New England Journal of Medicine. The author, Dr. David Morens, an epidemiologist with the National Institutes of Health in Maryland, pulls together details about Washington's treatment from dozens of published medical and historical sources over nearly two centuries.

''What I've tried to do is describe the medical events and also set Washington's final days in a social and cultural context,'' Dr. Morens, 51, said in an interview. ''My study shows that accusations of malpractice were very much in the air during and immediately after the great man died.''

Dr. Morens writes that when Washington's throat swelled so painfully that he could not swallow, he asked his doctors to bleed him. At the time it was standard medical practice, but the amount of blood removed was staggering -- 80 ounces, or 5 pints, in a single day -- and many people questioned whether he had been bled to death.