George E. Goodfellow On July 2, 1881, President James Garfield was shot by assassin Charles J. Guiteau. One bullet was thought later to have possibly lodged near his liver but could not be found. Standard medical practice at the time called for physicians to insert their unsterilized fingers into the wound to probe and locate the path of the bullet. Neither the germ theory nor Dr. Joseph Lister's technique for "antisepsis surgery" using dilute carbolic acid, which had been first demonstrated in 1865, much less surgically opening abdominal cavities to repair gunshot wounds, had not yet been accepted as standard practice by prevailing
Charles J. Guiteau the work of Noyes. He wandered from town to town lecturing to any and all who would listen to his religious ramblings, and in December 1877 gave a lecture at the Congregational Church in Washington, D.C. Guiteau spent the first half of 1880 in Boston, which he left owing money and under suspicion of theft. On June 11, 1880, he was a passenger on the SS "Stonington" when it collided with the SS "Narragansett" at night in heavy fog. The "Stonington" was able to return to port, but the "Narragansett" burned to the waterline and sank, with significant loss of