Abstract
In view of our 40th president's recent brush with death, it is interesting to recall the assassination of our 20th president, James Garfield, exactly a century ago in 1881. James Abram Garfield was elected President of the United States in 1880; like Ronald Reagan he was a Republican and a vigorous, healthy man, standing nearly 6 feet tall and weighing 210 lb. On the morning of July 2, 1881, Garfield was shot in the back by an assassin in the Washington, DC, train station. Eyewitnesses described the ensuing scene as one of "the greatest confusion and terror.... Soon the doors were shut to keep out the excited crowd, surgical aid called for the President, and the assassin hurried away to jail." Garfield's assassin, Charles Guiteau, was nearly killed by one of his prison guards and survived only because his cell bars deflected the bullet fired at him.<sup>1</sup> When Dr
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