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How Did James A. Garfield Die?
The short answer is that Pres. James A. Garfield died as the result of an assassinâs bullet. However, the ultimate cause of his death was more complex than a gunshot wound.
On July 2, 1881, Garfield was shot twice at the Baltimore and Potomac Railroad Station in Washington, D.C. His assailant was Charles J. Guiteau, a mentally unstable office seeker with messianic visions. The first shot grazed Garfieldâs arm, while the second bullet pierced his back and lodged behind his pancreas. However, the bullet did not strike any vital organs, and the wound was survivable. In fact, if Garfield had been treated today, he would have been released from the hospital within a few days. Unfortunately for Garfield, he lived at a time when medicine was largely oblivious of the role played by germs in illness and disease.
âI did not kill the president. The doctors did that. I merely shot him.â
âCharles J. Guiteau at his trial, 1882
A parade of doctors, both at the site of the shooting and in the hospital, poked and prodded his wound in search of the bullet, none of whom had sterilized their hands or medical instruments. The wisdom of the day dictated that the highest priority was the removal of the bullet, and Alexander Graham Bell was even enlisted to use his experimental metal detector to find it. (The detector âfailedâ because Bell had been told to scan the wrong area of Garfieldâs body.) And at one point doctors made a 20-inch- (51-cm-) long incision to search for the bullet. Making matters worse, all of the probing was conducted without anesthesia.
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Infection set in and eventually developed into sepsis. Garfield was in extreme pain, and as his condition deteriorated, his weight plummeted from about 210 pounds (95 kg) to only 130 pounds (59 kg). On September 6, 1881, Garfield was transported to his familyâs cottage in Elberon, New Jersey. He died there on September 19, 79 days after the attack. The cause of death was attributed to a heart attack, massive hemorrhaging, and sepsis. Some later medical historians have suggested that a ruptured gallbladder may also have contributed.
Guiteau was charged with murder, and he pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity. At his trial in 1881â82, he argued that the president had actually died from malpractice: âI did not kill the president. The doctors did that. I merely shot him.â He was not alone in making that claim. Others had also accused the lead physician, Dr. Doctor Willard Bliss (thatâs not a typo; Doctor was his first name), of negligence. The jury, however, was unmoved. Guiteau was convicted, and on June 30, 1882, he was executed by hanging.
