James A Garfield, the 20th president of the United States was president for less then 200 days before he was shot. The circumstances surrounding his attempted assassination and treatment are both unfortunate and bizarre. Medicine and technology as a whole were still in their beginning stages. Mankind had yet to fully understand the complexities of his own body. Doctor’s simply didn’t take the precautions that they do now, despite having known of bacteria to some extent for some time. It was living in such an unadvanced time, not a gunshot, that ultimately led to the president’s demise.
On July 2, 1881, James A Garfield, recently elected president of the United States, was about to set out on a trip to New England to visit his sick wife. As he passed through the waiting room, a young lawyer named Charles Guiteau snuck up behind him. Poor Charles had been denied the ambassadorship to France he had expected as a reward for a speech he had written for Garfield. The megalomaniac also believed he had seen a vision in which God told him to shoot the president. So as President Garfield walked by, Charles shot him in the back with a .44 pearl handled revolver. The bullet lodged itself somewhere in Garfield’s abdomen. As his would be assassin readily gave himself up to avoid being beaten to death, Garfield was quickly carted off to the White House.
There he was put under the care of Doctor Willard Bliss. The first thing Doctor Willard did was shove his un-sterilized fingers into the wound. He felt around inside the president for a bit, but he found no bullet. He did however, succeed in gouging a false passage that later confused other doctors and caused them to conclude that the bullet was in Garfield’s liver. Many more doctors made similar attempts and got similar results. The location of the tiny piece of lead continued to evade the presidential care givers. One doctor stuck his (also unsterilized) fingers so deep, that he actually punctured the liver. As the doctors continued to feel around inside him, a feverish president Garfield was put on a diet of milk and brandy.
On July 26, in a desperate attempt to save the president, Alexander Gram Bell, the creator of the telephone, and his assistant threw together a metal detector to find the elusive bullet. Strangely, the metal detector kept beeping wherever it was placed on Garfield’s body. Despite this, Bell said that he detected the metal much deeper then they had originally thought. Hopeful doctors cut open the president, but they found nothing. It was later discovered that the president had been lying on one of the first coil spring mattresses. Thus, if he had done this experiment on a normal bed, Bell probably would have been correct in his findings, and Garfield would have been able to prove himself as president.
The originally three inch wound was now a massive twenty inch hole in the president. It was incredibly infected, and he also began to show signs of infection from the bullet. On September 19th, 1881, after 79 days of ‘treatment’ James A Garfield died of a heart attack. The doctors concluded that he had died of a ruptured blood vessel in his stomach. In autopsy, the location of the bullet was finally revealed. It was lodged near his spinal cord in a protective cyst. Had the doctors left him alone, the president would have survived.
History books will tell you that our twentieth president was murdered by a crazed lawyer, but this is not the whole truth. It was the well meaning doctors gathered round his bed that truly killed James A Garfield. To be more precise, it was the newborn state of medicine of the time, the unsterilized fingers, the lack of adequate equipment and a blatant misunderstanding of the human body that ended the president’s short term. We will never know if the country would have flourished in his capable hands, but we do hope that an event like this will never repeat itself.
On July 2, 1881, James A Garfield, recently elected president of the United States, was about to set out on a trip to New England to visit his sick wife. As he passed through the waiting room, a young lawyer named Charles Guiteau snuck up behind him. Poor Charles had been denied the ambassadorship to France he had expected as a reward for a speech he had written for Garfield. The megalomaniac also believed he had seen a vision in which God told him to shoot the president. So as President Garfield walked by, Charles shot him in the back with a .44 pearl handled revolver. The bullet lodged itself somewhere in Garfield’s abdomen. As his would be assassin readily gave himself up to avoid being beaten to death, Garfield was quickly carted off to the White House. There he was put under the care of Doctor Willard Bliss. The first thing Doctor Willard did was shove his un-sterilized fingers into the wound. He felt around inside the president for a bit, but he found no bullet. He did however, succeed in gouging a false passage that later confused other doctors and caused them to conclude that the bullet was in Garfield’s liver. Many more doctors made similar attempts and got similar results. The location of the tiny piece of lead continued to evade the presidential care givers. One doctor stuck his (also unsterilized) fingers so deep, that he actually punctured the liver. As the doctors continued to feel around inside him, a feverish president Garfield was put on a diet of milk and brandy.
On July 26, in a desperate attempt to save the president, Alexander Gram Bell, the creator of the telephone, and his assistant threw together a metal detector to find the elusive bullet. Strangely, the metal detector kept beeping wherever it was placed on Garfield’s body. Despite this, Bell said that he detected the metal much deeper then they had originally thought. Hopeful doctors cut open the president, but they found nothing. It was later discovered that the president had been lying on one of the first coil spring mattresses. Thus, if he had done this experiment on a normal bed, Bell probably would have been correct in his findings, and Garfield would have been able to prove himself as president.
The originally three inch wound was now a massive twenty inch hole in the president. It was incredibly infected, and he also began to show signs of infection from the bullet. On September 19th, 1881, after 79 days of ‘treatment’ James A Garfield died of a heart attack. The doctors concluded that he had died of a ruptured blood vessel in his stomach. In autopsy, the location of the bullet was finally revealed. It was lodged near his spinal cord in a protective cyst. Had the doctors left him alone, the president would have survived.
History books will tell you that our twentieth president was murdered by a crazed lawyer, but this is not the whole truth. It was the well meaning doctors gathered round his bed that truly killed James A Garfield. To be more precise, it was the newborn state of medicine of the time, the unsterilized fingers, the lack of adequate equipment and a blatant misunderstanding of the human body that ended the president’s short term. We will never know if the country would have flourished in his capable hands, but we do hope that an event like this will never repeat itself.
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