"The doctors killed Garfield, I just shot him."
The shot in the back was not fatal, not hitting any vital organs. The bullet lodged behind the pancreas.
"If they had just left him alone he almost certainly would have survived," Millard said. Within minutes, doctors converged on the fallen president, using their fingers to poke and prod his open wounds. "Twelve different doctors inserted unsterilized fingers and instruments in Garfield's back probing for this bullet," Millard recounted, "and the first examination took place on the train station floor. I mean, you can't imagine a more germ-infested environment."
Metal detector??...Could have located it with a compass.
It might have worked had Garfield not been laying on a mattress full of steel springs.
L
Garfield was certainly the smartest man to ever be President, and might have been a great one, but we’ll never know because his tenure was so short.
A few years ago my Daughter gave me a book on Garfield’s assassination that covered 6 this in detail. Can’t recall the title but it was a good read and would make a good miniseries if held true to the book.
Watched a program on this. It claimed that Garfield’s physician would only let Bell scan where he, the doctor, thought the bullet might be, he did not allow bell to scan Garfield’s whole torso. It seemed that Garfield placed his complete trust in this particular doctor and basically told everyone the doctor’s advise and treatment were to be followed. And this doctor made some serious mistakes.
As to all of the probing. For a long time doctors had realized that if the bullet didn’t kill you, your clothing the bullet took with it in its journey into your could cause a deadly infection. The probing was to look both for the bullet and clothing scraps.
I believe the geiger counter kept hitting on the metal bed springs. If the assassin was being tried today he would be found guilty of a lesser offense by claiming the doctors and Bell killed the president. .