halfdime
Silver Member
No, this isn't about the comic strip cat, and it's not about a find I made today, but it is about a discovery I made today. Four US Presidents have been assassinated, and most people can name at least two. Abraham Lincoln, of course, was the first and John F. Kennedy the last. The details of both men's final hours, even minutes, have been the subject of an endless supply of books and articles. Kennedy's murder was even captured on film. Several other assassinations have been attempted, but only two more successfully. After Lincoln, James Garfield was shot in July of 1881, just months after his inauguration. How Garfield came to be President is an amazing story in itself, and from all descriptions he may have been one of the ablest men ever elected. His time in office was so short, however, that he's become little more than a footnote. Garfield was the 20th President, he was assassinated and that's it. Except that it's not. He was shot in a train station on July 2, and lingered until mid-September. In the end, it wasn't an assassin's bullet that killed him, but the incompetence of the medical care he received. In England, Joseph Lister (yes, of Listerine fame) had discovered that sterilizing hands and surgical equipment dramatically reduced infection after surgery, and much of the European medical community embraced his teaching on the subject. In the United States, most doctors knew better; there was obviously no such thing as invisible germs that caused infection, so why take precautions? With that mindset, numerous doctors poked and prodded Garfield, looking for the bullet. Ultimately, he died from massive infections, but not before the doctor in charge turned in desperation to Alexander Graham Bell, the inventor of the telephone. Bell had discovered a few things during the invention process, and realized that he had found a way to detect the presence of metal. He worked frantically to refine his equipment, and finally came up with a machine that could detect a lead bullet five inches deep in a body. Unforunately, he wasn't allowed to detect Garfield's whole body; the doctor believed that the bullet had lodged somewhere other than where it was finally found after an autopsy. The bullet didn't kill Garfield, his doctor(s) did, something the assassin pointed out at his trial. We all know that Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone, and it appears that he invented the metal detector as well!
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