When one thinks of presidential assassinations, Abraham Lincoln and John F. Kennedy spring rapidly to mind. If one thinks a little harder, you might also remember that Teddy Roosevelt became president following the assassination of President William McKinley. But the fourth president felled by an assassin's bullet, James A. Garfield, is often overlooked by Americans. No wonder, for he had been president for less than four months when he was shot by Charles Guiteau, and died an agonizing eighty days later.

Now an exhibit has opened at the National Museum of Health and Medicine at Walter Reed Army Medical Center examining the medical treatment received by President Garfield. At the time, 1881, medicine was a changing field in the United States, and it is generally accepted by historians that Garfield's doctors, not his assailant, killed him.

Garfield was waiting at the Baltimore and Potomac Railroad Station in Washington, about to leave for New England, when he was shot twice by the assassin, Charles J. Guiteau.

The first bullet grazed GarfieldÂ’s arm, said Lenore Barbian, anatomical collections curator for the museum. But the second struck him in the right side of the back and lodged deep in the body.

“No one expected Garfield to live through the night,” Dr. Barbian said.

As the display makes clear, the second bullet pierced GarfieldÂ’s first lumbar vertebra, crossing from right to left.

At the time, however, without the benefit of modern diagnostics, Garfield’s doctors could not determine the location of the bullet. “Trying to understand its pathway became their primary concern,” Dr. Barbian said.

At least a dozen medical experts probed the presidentÂ’s wound, often with unsterilized metal instruments or bare hands, as was common at the time.

Sterile technique, developed by the British surgeon Joseph Lister in the mid-1860Â’s, was not yet widely appreciated in the United States, although it was accepted in France, Germany and other parts of Europe. Historians agree that massive infection, which resulted from unsterile practices, contributed to GarfieldÂ’s death.

Alexander Graham Bell was brought in to try to locate the bullet with one of his inventions.

The exhibit also includes an image of the metal detector designed by Alexander Graham Bell to search for the bullet. It was composed of a battery and several metal coils positioned on a wooden platform and was connected to an earpiece.

Jeffrey S. Reznick, senior curator at the museum, said the device was designed to create an electromagnetic field, which would be disrupted in the presence of a metal object. The disruption would cause the device to emit a clicking sound through the earpiece.

“Electricity and magnetism were just being appreciated as ways to explore the body’s interior,” Dr. Reznick said.

Bell’s invention failed on two occasions to pinpoint the bullet’s location. Historians say this may have been because the device picked up metal coils in the president’s mattress, or because Bell searched only on the right side of Garfield’s body, where the lead physician, Dr. Doctor Willard Bliss — Doctor was his given name — had come to believe the bullet was lodged.

In early September, the president was moved from the White House to a cottage in Elberon, N.J., on the shore.

Garfield died in New Jersey on September 19, which, fittingly enough is the closing date of this exhibit, (it opened on July 2, the 125th anniversary of the shooting).

Interestingly enough, a similar wound today would require only a brief hospital stay.

At the autopsy, it became evident that the bullet had pierced GarfieldÂ’s vertebra but missed his spinal cord. The bullet had not struck any major organs, arteries or veins, and had come to rest in adipose tissue on the left side of the presidentÂ’s back, just below the pancreas.

Dr. Ira Rutkow, a professor of surgery at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey and a medical historian, said: “Garfield had such a nonlethal wound. In today’s world, he would have gone home in a matter or two or three days.”

One part of the exhibit is a section of Garfield's spine consisting of the 12th thoracic and 1st and 2nd lumbar vertebrae -- removed at his autopsy and passed around to the jurors as an exhibit at the trial of the assassin.

If you would like to read more about the Garfield assassination, but not something that is a dry, scholarly tome, I am told that Sarah Vowell's Assasination Vacation contains an interesting and accessible account of the assassination and its aftermath. I'm planning to read it shortly.

Posted by: Greg at 05:40 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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