Baltimore and Potomac Railroad Station held at Platz's Saloon. On July 2, 1881, it was announced in the local newspapers that President James A. Garfield would be leaving for his summer vacation. En route to board a train to New Jersey, he was shot in the back by assassin Charles Guiteau while walking across the lobby of the Baltimore and Potomac station with James G. Blaine. While the president survived the initial shooting, doctors subsequently probed his wounds with non-sterilized objects in a frantic search for the bullet. The bacterial infections they introduced to the wound were the likely cause of his eventual death in
Edward Charles Spitzka Hospital. He was a professor of nervous and mental diseases and of medical jurisprudence at the New York Post-Graduate Medical College from 1882 to 1887. In 1890, Spitzka served as President of the American Neurological Society. In 1883/1884, he served as President of the New York Neurological Society. Spitzka was the attending physician at the execution of William Kemmler in New York's Auburn Prison on August 6, 1890, the first execution using the new electric chair. In 1881, Spitzka was an expert witness at the trial of Charles J. Guiteau, who was accused of the assassination of United States President