James Garfield’s death was ultimately caused by doctors

James Garfield's facts reveal that none of the two shots that President Garfield received on July 2, 1881, from enraged office-seeker Charles Guiteau, were fatal. Garfield lay on the floor of the train station receiving medical attention from doctors who had just arrived at the site. Garfield's doctors, like the majority of the American medical profession, did not yet accept the beliefs of men like Joseph Lister and Louis Pasteur concerning germs, antiseptics, and sterilization, opting to hold the view that disease and illness were brought on by poor air quality.

President Garfield was treated by more than 12 different medical professionals, all of whom turned a non-fatal wound into a cesspool of infection and an abscess while searching fruitlessly for the bullet they could not detect and refusing to apply antiseptics. Garfield lingered in bed for two weeks as his caregivers tried to get rid of the projectile, but they only managed to make the infection and the cut in his stomach worse. Then came a splenic artery rupture, blood infection, and heart attack. Even Alexander Graham Bell's brand-new metal detector was used to help in the search. In the process, an illness spread throughout Garfield's body and ultimately claimed his life.