James Garfield

In her book ‘Destiny of the Republic: A Tale of Madness, Medicine and the Murder of a President’ journalist and author Candace Millard calls U.S. President James Garfield one of the most extraordinary Americans of his time. Born in abject poverty he put himself through college as a janitor. By age 26 he was a college president. Garfield called the presidency ‘a bleak mountain’ because he had to spend all day listening to office seekers asking him for jobs. One of them assassinated Garfield after just 6 months in office. Garfield may have survived the shooting, but his doctors repeatedly inserted dirty hands into his body looking for the bullet and rejected Alexander Graham Bell’s offer to use an early x-ray style device to find it. The autopsy showed the President didn’t have to die. Congress rejected the doctor’s bill because of his incompetence. The scandal changed medicine. Millard tells an amazing forgotten chapter of U.S. history.