How Presidents Died: A 19th Century Perspective on Physician Adoption →
Over at HISTalk, Doctor Sam Bierstock gives a fascinating (and somewhat disgusting) history of how our presidents died in office.
Over the next two months, Garfield was subjected to repeated probing of the wound with unsterile fingers and instruments, non-aseptic incisions to drain abscesses, and other invasive procedures in an effort to locate the bullet, which was, in fact, located harmlessly in fatty tissue behind the pancreas. Eventually, the original three-inch deep wound was converted to a twenty-inch long contaminated, purulent gash stretching from the president’s ribs to his groin.