Jedediah Hyde Baxter Columbian University (now George Washington University Law School) with an LL.B. degree. Baxter's duties included serving as personal physician to the President of the United States. He attended James A. Garfield's family, but was out of town when Charles J. Guiteau shot Garfield in July 1881. As a result, Baxter did not examine Garfield following the shooting or treat him during his subsequent illness. By the time he rushed back to Washington, Doctor Willard Bliss had taken charge and would not let Baxter see the wounded President. According to contemporary accounts, Bliss stated that Baxter was attempting to see Garfield
Charles J. Guiteau probing the wound with unwashed hands and non-sterilized instruments, Garfield died on September 19, eleven weeks after being shot. Most modern physicians familiar with the case state that Garfield would have easily recovered from his wounds with sterile medical care, which was common in the United States a decade later, while Candice Millard argues that Garfield would have survived Guiteau's bullet wound had his doctors simply left him alone. However, Garfield's biographer Allan Peskin stated that medical malpractice did not contribute to Garfield's death; the inevitable infection and blood poisoning that would ensue from a deep bullet wound resulted in