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 Arbor, Michigan, in order to attend the University of Michigan. Due to inadequate academic preparation, he failed the entrance examinations. Despite cramming in French and algebra at Ann Arbor High School, during which time he received numerous letters from his father concerning his progress, he quit, and in June 1860 joined the utopian religious sect the Oneida Community, in Oneida, New York, with which Guiteau's father already had close affiliations. According to Brian Resnick of "The Atlantic", Guiteau "worshiped" the group's founder, John Humphrey Noyes, once writing that he had "perfect, entire and absolute confidence in him in all things".