THE CURIOUS CASE OF PRESIDENT JAMES GARFIELD'S ASSASSINATION

Joseph Lister

The ideas of Joseph Lister, who pioneered antiseptic surgery, were generally discounted by the medical establishment of the mid-19th century. In those days, surgeons routinely did not wash their hands or sterilize their instruments or patient's wounds. While embraced more in Europe especially by a younger generation and known throughout the West, Lister's ideas simply were not trusted or believed despite scientific evidence backing them. This would eventually change after this event.

James Garfield

 

On July 2, 1881, President James Garfield was shot twice at a Washington, DC railway station by Charles Guiteau who had hoped to gain federal office but was deemed unqualified.

Charles Guiteau

Garfield's most serious wound was to his back and by today's standards, it would normally be survivable. Not the case in 1881. One of the first medical persons to arrive and attend to Garfield examined the wound with his bare (and unwashed) finger in an attempt to find and perhaps remove the bullet. Bear in mind that common means of transport was by carriage or horseback. A typical action upon dismounting was to drop the reins (the horse will stay put) which often would drag into the manure-ridden street picking up bacteria and transferring to the rider's fingers. 

Sure enough, the digital exam of Garfield's wound introduced bacteria which became septic and finally, 80 days later, killed him. 

Guiteau, a lawyer, mounted a novel defense in part stating that he didn't kill the President, the doctors did. He was executed the following year.

It took another decade and linkage to the discoveries of Louis Pasteur for Lister's methods to be embraced and used in Western medicine.