Note: All items pictured on this website are in Frank W. Reiser's personal collection. Please contact if you wish to discuss exhibiting the collection at your institution or need additional information about the topic.

The shooting of President James Garfield by Charles Guiteau on July 2, 1881, as the president walked through the main waiting room of the Baltimore and Potomac Railroad Station in Washington, D.C Harpers Weekly  1881

Assassin Charles Guiteau stated that he shot President Garfield “to unite the Republican Party and save the Republic!”

INTRODUCTION

James Garfield (1831-1881), the 20th President of the United States, served only a few months of his four-year term of office before being shot twice from behind. On July 2, 1881, when the president walked through the main waiting room of the Baltimore and Potomac Railroad Station in Washington, D.C. Charles J. Guiteau, who had been stalking Garfield for days, found a lapse in security, pulled out a gun, and acted. Two bullets struck Garfield. One grazed his hand; the other hit him dead center just below his ribs. In shock and pain, Garfield reportedly yelled, “What is happening?” Unable to stand, the wounded President fell upon the train station floor. Other travelers in the terminal immediately swarmed Guiteau, wrested the still-smoking gun from his hand, and restrained him until the police arrested him. 

A year later, Garfield will have died, and Guiteau executed.  J. J. Woodward will have autopsied both men, removed several internal organs from each, sealed them in jars of formalin, and placed the “pickled” innards in jars for public display at the Army Medical Museum in Washington. The autopsy report confirms that President Garfield’s lung was removed during the autopsy by Woodward.  

Over a hundred years later, one of President Garfield’s organs found its way from the autopsy table to eBay’s online auction site. A nineteenth-century collection of sixty microscope slides, most likely owned by M. D. Luehrs of Cleveland, had been put up for bidding. Most of the slides bear Luehrs’ custom label, but several are labeled with the custom label of W. B. Rezner, a surgeon in the American Civil War and an avid microscopist. Following the war, Dr. William B. Rezner, a physician in Cleveland, founded the city’s first microscopical society, serving as an active member until his death. It is documented that J. J. Woodward, another Civil War surgeon and microscopist, was President Garfield’s physician and participant in the autopsy of the assassinated president, and that the lung had been removed.  

---

Garfield’s lungs had been removed during an autopsy conducted by a small group of physicians, including Joseph Jenever Woodward (1833-1884), an American Civil War surgeon, microscopy enthusiast, collector of body parts, and curator for the United States Army Medical Museum. The details of how a piece of President Garfield’s lung wound up on a microscope slide in the author’s collection follow. 

The Assassination of President Garfield By Charles Guiteau

Charles Guiteau (1831 – 1882) was a somewhat down-on-his-heels attorney. He supported Garfield during his 1880 presidential run and volunteered to work on the presidential candidate’s campaign team. Garfield won the election, and Guiteau, believing he helped push him over the top, felt entitled to a Presidential appointment to a position such as ambassador to France. He wrote increasingly demanding letters to Garfield requesting such a post. The staff handling the President’s correspondence dismissed him as a crackpot and placed his name on the White House “no entry” list. Deeply embittered, Guiteau bought a gun and began stalking Garfield whenever he saw him leaving the Whitehouse.

Guiteau’s opportunity to take a shot at Garfield came on July 2, 1881, at the Baltimore and Potomac Railroad Depot in Washington, D.C. The President had been in office for only a few months and was leaving for a political tour of New England. Garfield entered the train station through a side door marked Ladies’ Entrance, escorted by Secretary of State James Blaine. Two shots rang out as soon as the two walked from the ladies’ waiting room into the terminal’s central plenum. He anticipated the President’s route. Guiteau was lying in wait by the doorway into the large room. He fired two shots at Garfield from behind. The first grazed Garfield’s hand. The second hit the president’s back dead-center, blasting a hole through the uppermost lumbar vertebra. Reportedly, Garfield yelled, “What happened!” as he fell to the ground. 

Secretary Blaine watched as several commuters restrained Guiteau. The first medical help on the scene was Dr. Smith Townsend. He immediately gave the President a dose of brandy to keep him from slipping into shock and was the first of several physicians who stuck their dirty fingers into the gaping hole in Garfield’s back. It was infectious bacteria from the unclean hands of doctors that caused a raging infection that slowly claimed Garfield’s life. Or, as Guiteau later loudly pleaded before a jury, “The doctors killed Garfield! I only shot him. “

Townsend could not stop the bleeding, so he placed Garfield on a straw-and-horsehair mattress, which a worker found somewhere in the station, and carried him to a small office. They waited over an hour for a horse-drawn ambulance to arrive to bring the President back to the White House. 

Garfield’s Secretary of War, Robert Todd Lincoln, arrived at the scene well before the ambulance and sent his private carriage to find Dr. D. Willard Bliss. Bliss was well known to the District of Columbia’s elite as one of the best doctors available. Garfield was still waiting for the ambulance when Bliss arrived. He was Garfield’s childhood friend and immediately established himself as the lead physician for assembling the team to try to save the president’s life. Bliss was the second surgeon to probe Garfield’s bullet wound with unwashed fingers. In 1881, hand cleaning and antiseptic methodologies were contentious issues, particularly among surgeons tenured in the blood-and-guts hellscape of civil war hospital tents. 

Dr. Charles Burleigh Purvis (1842-1929), a prominent African American surgeon and later a professor at Howard University Medical School, played a brief but historic role in the aftermath of President James A. Garfield’s assassination attempt in 1881. As surgeon-in-chief at Freedmen’s Hospital from 1881 to 1894, Purvis was near the train station where the shooting occurred and was among the first physicians to attend to the wounded President, becoming the first Black doctor to provide medical care to a sitting U.S. president. He assisted in stabilizing Garfield on the dirty and unsanitary station floor during the immediate chaos. However, Purvis’s involvement was short-lived, as Dr. Doctor Willard Bliss soon took charge of the case, assuming overall control and forming a treatment team that excluded Purvis from ongoing care. Beyond this event, Purvis’s career focused on general surgery, obstetrics, gynecology, and hospital administration, as well as on advocacy against racial discrimination in medicine, though his surviving writings are limited and do not detail specific clinical techniques related to the incident.

It has since been argued but never settled that Garfield might have been able to recover from being shot had the bullet’s entry wound been cleaned and allowed to heal, leaving the projectile to naturally become encapsulated by scar tissue (as the autopsy later indicated was occurring). But the doctors were obsessed with searching for the lost bullet. The half-inch bullet hole in Garfield’s back was probed for the next 79 days of his life, eventually becoming a 7-inch gaping wound. 

President Garfield’s Medical Team

The team of physicians assembled and led by Dr. Bliss (seated right) supported President Garfield during his 79-day fight for recovery. Dr. Susan Anne Edson, one of the first women to earn a medical degree in the United States, was also part of the team but was excluded from the picture. Dr. J. J. Woodward sits to the far left. A few years following Garfield’s death, Woodward was institutionalized for psychotic behaviors. During his internment, he committed suicide by jumping off the sanitarium’s roof. Dr. Hamilton, standing behind, is not related to Dr. Alan  Hamilton, the alienist, who testified at Guiteau’s trial regarding his sanity. Seated to his left is Dr. Rayburn, who, soon afterward, became the head of the national Republican Party. Dr. Charles Rayburn (1833-1909), to the right of Bliss and leaning forward, is a founding doctor of Howard University Medical School. To his right sits Dr Joseph K. Barnes (1817-1883), with Dr. Agnew leaning forward between the two. Barnes, past Surgeon General, was the oldest member of the medical group. He was suffering from nephritis, lost weight, and appeared frail during Garfield’s period of care. Barnes and Bliss later bore the brunt of the press for practicing antiquated medicine. Reportedly, Barnes’s public decline prompted Congress to pass a bill leading to his immediate retirement. David Hayes Agnew was the lead surgeon at the University of Pennsylvania.

Robert Reyburn (1833-1909) was a surgeon who treated President James A. Garfield after he was shot in 1881. Reyburn also wrote a book about the case, Clinical History of the Case of President James Abram Garfield. He later became the head of the National

Dr. Susan Edson. At the time, the President’s wife, Lucretia Garfield, was recovering from a severe case of malaria, and the doctor treating her, Susan Ann Edson, M.D., was with her when she returned to the White House. Dr. Edson was among the first women in the United States to graduate from college with an M.D. Mrs. Garfield insisted that Dr. Edson be included as a member of the medical team caring for her husband, but Dr. Bliss strongly objected. Nonetheless, he yielded to the weight of Mrs. Garfield’s persistence. However, Bliss refused to honor Edson’s medical credentials and limited her involvement to the duties of a nurse, an insult to her medical degree and professional competency because of her sex.

Dr Susan Edson, restricted to nursing duties, tends to the dying President by fanning him. Edson was one of the first women to earn a medical degree in the United States and was the personal physician to Lucretia Garfield, the President’s wife. Leslie’s newspaper was the first to report that Edson was included in the President’s medical team.

 

Garfield’s health steadily declined. He grew weaker and lost weight as bacterial infections spread throughout his body. He went from his normal weight of 210 pounds down to 130. To stem the weight loss, His doctors began experimenting with a novel feeding treatment. They administered enemas of beef consommé to the President, a practice referred to as “rectal feeding.”  Even Alexander Graham Bell, a medical doctor and inventor of the telephone, had a go at Garfield with an experimental device of his design. Bell was developing a metal detector and brought a prototype of the contraption to the White House to aid the search for the seemingly unfindable bullet. Unfortunately, Garfield was lying on a mattress made with steel springs.  The background metal continually set off Bell’s device, and the attending physicians refused to allow their patient to be lifted off the mattress. Consequently, although it worked adequately, Bell’s detector was unable to locate the bullet. Later, the device was refined into a valuable tool for pinpointing the location of bullets or shrapnel buried in soldiers’ bodies during the Spanish-American War and WWI. 

The Death of President Garfield

The Passing of President James Garfield at his home in Elberon, Long Branch, New Jersey. The President’s wife, Lucretia, and two of his seven children watch in sorrow. Dr. Willard Bliss stands by holding his hand to his mouth. Haze Angew stands to the left, leaning forward. Drs. Barnes and Hamilton are standing at the head of the bed, L to R.  Harper’s Bazaar, July 8, 1881.

The Garfield Monument in Lake View Cemetery, Cleveland, Ohio. The Detroit Photographic Company was established in 1898 but changed its name to the Detroit Printing Company (DPC) in 1903. The company’s mission was to introduce a novel color printing process developed in Switzerland, known as Photochrom, in the United States. DPC changed the name to Phostint and registered it, making the term exclusive to the postcards they produced. The Phostint process is an offset photo-mechanical printing method based on the lithographic principle. Creating DPC postcards requires printing each color separately on the card, using a distinct lithographic plate for each. DPC used between eight and twenty colors per postcard, resulting in a unique look carried across all postcards in their line. Competition from cheaper printing methods led to DPC’s receivership in 1923.

The Autopsy of President James Garfield, led by Dr. J.J. Woodward

President Garfield died on September 19, 1881. His passing allowed physicians to open him up to find the errant bullet and survey other morbidities that had infiltrated Garfield’s insides. Rummaging about the President’s splayed abdomen, the physicians finally found the assassin’s bullet. The projectile was above Garfield’s pancreas, nestling against the pancreatic artery. It came to rest there because Garfield’s backbone deflected its trajectory to the left side of the body. The physicians had been assuming it had continued in a straight line, so they focused their exploratory probing on the President’s right side. The autopsy also involved removing Garfield’s liver, stomach, heart, and lungs. The physicians (most likely Woodward, as he had done the same with the vertebra of John Wilkes Booth during a previous autopsy) dissected and removed a length of the President’s backbone where the bullet passed through and into his body.

 

 

 

The section of backbone was defleshed, cleaned, and mounted onto a wooden board. What probably looked like a 9th-grade science project was sent to the Army Medical Museum for preservation and display. At the museum, a curator remounted the vertebra and inserted a colorful rod through the bullet’s channel to make its trajectory visible. It was then displayed in a protective glass case. J. J. Woodward had made a similar museum display using the neck vertebra of John Wilkes Booth, Lincoln’s assassin. Booth was shot through the neck, and a rod was placed through the hole in the cervical vertebra to show the bullet’s path. Woodward was part of the medical team that performed Booth’s autopsy. Garfield’s vertebra was on display at the Army Medical Museum until 2000, when, in response to a shift in public sensitivities, it was moved to the storage collection.

 

Death by Lightning is a four-part series by Netflix that covers the election and assassination of James Garfield. It is highly recommended to contextualize the information covered by this webpage.

 
Did a Newspaper’s Front Page Cartoon Foresee the Demise of President James Garfield?

The article in Puck, accompanying the front-page political cartoon, alludes to Republican presidential nominee James A. Garfield’s controversial history. It sheds light on serious allegations, notably his purported connections to the Crédit Mobilier scandal and the De Golyer pavement contract scandal (pay-to-play and bribery), which tarnished Garfiedield’s reputation and sparked concerns regarding corruption. However, Puck also recognizes Garfield’s rise as a self-made individual and notes the public’s intriguing willingness to overlook such controversies during his nomination. More importantly, the article primarily scrutinizes The Sun’s journalistic integrity, asserting that its owner, Charles A. Dana, has selectively focused on Garfield’s alleged misdeeds while conveniently ignoring the shortcomings of candidates he supported. This selective criticism reveals the bias, contrasting sharply with The Sun’s professed stance of impartiality.

In the 1880 edition of the Puck newspaper in New York City, a full-page political cartoon eerily predicted the untimely demise of President James Garfield. This uncanny coincidence raises the question: could the editor have glimpsed the future, or is this merely a chilling coincidence? Let me explain.

The cover cartoon cleverly references a nineteenth-century contraption called the solar microscope, a popular attraction of the time that used sunlight to project magnified images of pond life onto large screens for public entertainment. Puck created a pictorial syllogism by using the name of a competing newspaper, the New York Sun, and reinterpreting it as a “Sun Microscope.” The editor of the Sun, Charles A. Dana, is depicted as a showman selling the public exaggerated depictions of Garfield’s alleged missteps during his tenure as a senator. Dana’s paper aimed to portray these “ugly creatures of corruption” in order to undermine Garfield’s candidacy for the presidency, just three months before the election.

To help readers understand the message behind the political cartoon, an accompanying article explains that Garfield’s infractions are so minor that they require a microscope to be seen. While the images of these microscopic creatures may appear alarming, they are too insignificant to warrant concern. The cartoon suggests that using the Sun’s microscope to inspect Garfield’s record is merely a tactic by Dana to unfairly tarnish Garfield’s reputation before the election.

Fast forward to the tragic end of James Garfield, where microscopes played a significant role. Following his shooting, the first physician on the scene administered brandy and then inserted his finger into the bullet wound, attempting to locate the projectile. At least six different physicians subsequently probed Garfield’s wound with unwashed hands before he was transported from the train station, all convinced that finding the bullet was crucial to his recovery.

At the time, although the germ theory of disease was recognized, it remained a subject of controversy. Ignaz Semmelweis had recently demonstrated that bacteria could cause disease and that unwashed hands of physicians spread infections—a claim that was not well received by surgeons accustomed to their practices from experiences in Civil War hospitals. The medical team surrounding Garfield obsessively searched for the bullet, believing his survival depended on removing it. However, one team member had a different perspective.

Dr. J. J. Woodward, the supervising director of the Army Medical Museum, had conducted extensive research on injuries and outcomes from Civil War field hospitals. He had learned that it was not always necessary to remove a bullet; in some cases, the body could encapsulate it, protecting itself over time. After Garfield’s death, Dr. Woodward led his autopsy and discovered the lost bullet next to the President’s pancreas, noting that encapsulation was already in progress. He recognized, through his experience, that Garfield might have survived had he been allowed to heal naturally.

Ultimately, Garfield’s prolonged suffering—culminating in his death four months later—was the result of being overwhelmed by tiny microscopic organisms. This webpage focuses on a microscope slide of President Garfield’s lung, likely removed during his autopsy by Dr. Woodward, a pioneering American microscopist. A remarkable symmetry exists between the satirical use of a microscope during Garfield’s presidential campaign and the disease-ridden end of his short tenure in office.

Garfield’s assassin, Charles Guiteau, acting as his own defence attorney, stated to the court during his trial: I did not kill Garfield, his doctors did that. I only shot him.  

On May 16, 1890, The Detroit Journal published an Associated Press Dispatch that a portion of the lung of President Garfield was taken at the time of the autopsy, cut up, and distributed among microscopists. Upon being interviewed about the claim’s foundation, the Journal states that it knows of persons in Detroit who possess such portions. Reprinted from Microscopical Bulletin and Science News, Feb. 1890, Published by James W. Queen, 924 Chestnut St., Philadelphia.

 

“Send Me Your Arms!” The Opening Command from the Army Medical Museum

During the American Civil War, the Army Medical Museum was established by the United States Surgeon General, William Hammond. J. J. Woodward, a surgeon experienced in a Civil War field hospital, was reassigned to help supervise the fledgling institution alongside Dr. John H. Brinton of Philadelphia. One of the missions assigned to the new institution was to collect information about injuries, treatment, and outcomes for soldiers wounded while serving in combat. An order was dispatched from the Surgeon General’s office to Army Field surgeons, instructing them to record descriptions of the injuries they treated and to send physical samples along with the documentation back to the Army Museum in Washington.

The order from Woodward included amputated body parts and other anatomical specimens removed from the treated men would be packaged and shipped to Woodward in Washington, D.C.

William B. Rezner (d. 1883), a Civil War Surgeon and microscopist, was one of many doctors who complied with the request by sending body parts removed from wounded soldiers to the Army Medical Museum.

William Rezner specialized in shoulders. The body parts he contributed are documented in a logbook compiled by J. J. Woodward, a fellow surgeon and microscopist. This interchange may have laid the groundwork for later communications between Rezner and Woodward as both became prominent nineteenth-century microscopists.

The Trial and Hanging of Charles Guiteau

 

Alan Hamilton, known by the press as “The Alienist,” Provided Expert Witness Testimony At the Trial of Charles Guiteau, evaluating his sanity. (Hamilton 1916)

Guiteau’s only option to evade execution was a plea of insanity. His guilt was beyond doubt. Guiteau was arrested while standing behind the wounded President with a smoking revolver. Making his guilt even more specific, Guiteau acted before a crowd of travelers, including several newspaper reporters. Guiteau was a lawyer and demanded to represent himself before the bar. Judge Cox granted Guiteau’s request, allowing him to sporadically leap to his feet and exhibit unhinged behavior, such as bursting into song or reading a manifesto to the court about the ills of government. His reasoning provided good reasons for many to consider him mentally ill. However, Guiteau clearly stated that he was perfectly sane and only became crazy while firing the gun at Garfield. Judge Cox also allowed Guiteau to be represented by another attorney, his sister’s husband, George Scoville (1824 – 1906). During the trial, Scoville held steady on the insanity defense. Alan McClain Hamilton, the most prominent psychiatrist of the day and historically recognized as “The father of medical psychiatry,” testified as an expert witness for the prosecution. The opinion Hamilton offered the court was that, although Guiteau appeared irrational, his mental functions were well within the range of those knowing the difference between right and wrong. Hamilton added that Guiteau’s bazaar courtroom antics were a ruse to escape the noose—an opinion he reiterated thirty years later in his autobiography. The jury found Guiteau to be sane enough to be guilty of murder. He was hanged for the crime on June 30, 1882, in the Washington, D.C., prison jail yard, where he had been confined since his arrest. Following the execution, Guiteau was autopsied by J. J. Woodward and other physicians. His headless corpse was buried at the site of his execution, with his head being displayed in the Army Medical Museum.

The Unusual Fate Befalling Outstanding People’s Brains

Guiteau’s autopsy was of great interest to physicians who were speculating that a correlation between his murderous behavior and a brain abnormality could be found. For this reason, Woodward invited Dr. Edward Curtis Spitzka, a notable neurologist and psychiatrist from New York City, to join the autopsy team.

The Preserved Brain of Charles Guiteau – what’s left of it. Researchers have examined sections of Guiteau’s brain for a century in search of anomalies. After each investigation, the specimen got smaller. A replica of the preserved brain made a quick appearance in the Netflix series Death by Lightning. Photo: courtesy of the National Museum of Health and Medicine.

They found that Guiteau’s brain lacked a significant Sylvian Sulcus, a furrow between the parietal and temporal lobes. Nevertheless, as the missing furrow had previously been observed in the brains of individuals exhibiting normal behavior—albeit uncommonly—they concluded that they found no structural abnormality to explain his deviant actions.

A brain’s topography is convoluted. The grooves between the convolutions are termed sulci. The Sylvan Sulci is a major one separating the lateral hemisphere of the frontal lobe from the rest of the lobe. Guiteau did not have one. Puzzling as that may seem, the physicians’ knowledge of brain function, primarily based on survivors of Civil War head injuries, led them to believe that the furrow’s absence would have little effect on behavior. 

Following the autopsy, Guiteau’s brain and his de-fleshed skull were sent to the Army Medical Museum for preservation, where they were placed on exhibition. The National Museum of Medical History still holds the items, but due to changing social attitudes towards the display of human remains, curators moved the brain and skull to the museum’s storage lockers.

 

Albert Einstein’s and Charles Guiteau’s Brains Have Something In Common
After Einstein’s death on April 18, 1955, Dr. Thomas Stoltz Harvey, a pathologist at Princeton Hospital who had performed Einstein’s autopsy, removed his brain without the permission of his family. Harvey claimed that Einstein had permitted this before his death, and that family members later consented.

Harvey dissected and extensively photographed Einstein’s brain. He prepared over 240 histological sections of the brain, mounted them on microscope slides, and distributed them to researchers worldwide. Unfortunately, many of them were lost or damaged over time.
Harvey kept the rest of the brain in jars of formalin for further study, but he never availed himself of the opportunity. He was fired from his job at Princeton Hospital for performing autopsies on corpses he was not authorized to cut up. Apparently, one of his “recreational” dissections was performed on the body of a close friend of the hospital’s Chief of Staff.
After Harvey died in 2007, Einstein’s remaining brain parts were sent from Princeton to the National Museum of Medicine in Maryland. A set of Harvey’s microscope slides, made from the brain, was donated to the Historical Collections at the National Museum of American History in Washington, D.C., and to the Mutter Medical Museum in Philadelphia, where they remain on display.

How Did William B. Rezner Get Slices of Garfield’s Lung?

William B. Rezner, M.D. (d. 1883) was a physician, surgeon, and founding member of the Cleveland Microscopical Society and served the organization in various capacities, including as its President. He served as a board member for the American Society of Microscopists, a national organization, and demonstrated microscopical techniques at several of its meetings. As a microscopist, Rezner made significant contributions to the field. One of his main pursuits was measuring the resolution of microscope lenses using fine-lined microscope slides, a device known as a micrometer. He developed a technique for depositing a thin silver coating on a finely lined slide and viewing it with optically controlled illumination by modifying a Wenham reflex illuminator to reveal previously unseen separations. For this, he is credited with being the first to resolve 120,000 lines per inch —the smallest spacing ever observed with a light microscope. He demonstrated the methodology using his silver-plated micrometer at the annual 1880 meeting of the American Microscopical Society in Buffalo, NY.

Rezner’s magic finger was an attachment for microscope objectives to enable the positioning of tiny diatoms on microscope slides. It was the only microscope apparatus designed by Rezner to be sold commercially, although no record of his patenting the device has been found.

In Rezner’s obituary, published in the Cleveland Journal of Microscopy and written by the society’s secretary, C.M. Vorce, it is stated that Rezner had been a practitioner of microscopy for more than twenty years. This implies he began working with microscopes while serving as a surgeon during the American Civil War. As a medical doctor, his interest was likely in exploring the human body at the microscopic level.

More information about the life of J. B. Rezner can be found on Brian Stephenson’s site: http://microscopist.net/Rezner.html 

 

J. J. Woodward Conducted Autopsies on President Abraham Lincoln, the Assassin Charles Wilkes Booth, President James Garfield, and the Assassin Charles Guiteau.

Dr. Joseph Janvier Woodward (1833-1884), a prominent Surgeon and Brevet Lieutenant Colonel in the U.S. Army, was born in Philadelphia on October 30, 1833, and passed away near the city on August 17, 1884. After graduating valedictorian from Philadelphia Central High School in 1855, he pursued medical studies at the University of Pennsylvania, earning an M.D. in 1853. Dr. Woodward established his medical practice in Philadelphia, where he provided medical care, offered private instruction in microscopy, and actively participated in the Pathological Society of Philadelphia.

During the Civil War, he served as an assistant surgeon in the Second Artillery of the Army of the Potomac. On May 19, 1862, he was assigned to the Surgeon General’s Office in Washington, D.C., a position he held until his demise. Alongside Dr. John H. Brinton, he oversaw the collection of materials and the compilation of the Medical and Surgical History of the War for the newly established Military Medical Museum. Following the war, Dr. Woodward assumed responsibility for the medical collection of the Army Medical Museum and the preservation of the medical portion of the Medical and Surgical History of the War.

While working at the museum, Dr. Woodward became interested in photomicrography through the experiments of Dr. William Thomson, then overseeing a hospital in Washington. Recognizing the importance of accurate representations of pathological histology, Dr. Woodward set out to obtain improved microscope objectives suitable for photomicrography. His publications provided a significant impetus for advancements in microscopic construction within the United States. At the Army Medical Museum, he designed a dedicated darkroom specifically tailored for photomicrography, allowing operators to project magnified images directly onto the photochemical process. Dr. Woodward’s contributions in this field resulted in the production of high-quality photomicrographic prints.

In addition to his work on the Medical and Surgical History of the War, Dr. Woodward authored reports on cholera and yellow fever in the U.S. Army, published in 1867 and 1868, respectively. His series of reports, accompanied by photographs, explored the application of photomicrography in testing objects and conducting histological work.

Tragically, Dr. Woodward’s emotional well-being suffered due to the stress of writing autopsy reports for high-profile cases, including those of President Abraham Lincoln, the assassin Charles Wilkes Booth, President James Garfield, and the deranged murderer Charles Guiteau. The combined workload of writing numerous volumes on the medical history of the Civil War and these autopsies led to his emotional collapse, resulting in his institutionalization in 1883. He ultimately took his own life by jumping off the roof of the asylum in 1884. Dr. Woodward’s reputation as a skilled microscopist and pathologist remains significant, highlighted by his involvement in these noteworthy autopsy cases.

President Garfield’s Autopsy: The Section Discussing His Lungs (plain language version follows)

The following section is an excerpt from the official record of the post-mortem examination of the body of President James A. Garfield. The autopsy was conducted on September 20, 1881, at 4:30 P.M., eighteen hours after death, at Franklyn Cottage, Elberon, N.J.

On the right side, slight pleuritic adhesions existed between the convex surface of the lower lobe of the lung and the costal pleura, and firm adhesions between the anterior edge of the lower lobe, the pericardium, and the diaphragm. The right lung weighed thirty-two ounces. The posterior part
of the fissure between its upper and lower lobes was congenitally incomplete. The lower lobe of the right lung was hypostatically congested, and considerable portions, especially toward its base, were the seat of broncho-pneumonia. The bronchial tubes contained a considerable quantity of stringy mucous pus. Their mucous surface was
reddened by catarrhal bronchitis. The lung tissue was oedematous. (A footnote here says: A part at least of this condition was doubtless due to the extravasation of the injecting fluids by the embalmer.) But it contained no abscesses or infractions.] On the left side, the lower lobe of the lung was bound behind the costal pleura, above the upper lobe, and below the diaphragm by pretty firm pleuritic adhesions. The left lung weighed twenty-seven ounces. The condition of its bronchial tubes and of the lung tissues was very nearly the same as on the right side, the chief difference being that the area of broncho-pneumonia in
the lower lobe was much less extensive in the left lung than in the right. In the lateral part of the lower lobe of the left lung, and about an inch from its pleural surface, there was a group of four-minute areas of gray hepatization, each about one-eighth of an inch in diameter. There were no infractions and no abscesses in any part of the lung tissue. The full transcript can be found reprinted here:  Brown, Emma Elizabeth. (1881) The Life and Public Service of James A. Garfield, Twentieth President of the United States. D. Lothrop and Company, Boston. pp. 517 – 518 and at:     

Plain Language Interpretation of the Autopsy Describing Garfield’s Lungs

The medical report examined a patient’s lungs. On the right side, there were slight adhesions between the lower lobe of the lung and surrounding tissues, like the chest wall, pericardium (heart covering), and diaphragm. The right lung was heavier than usual and had congestion, inflammation, and areas of bronchopneumonia. The bronchial tubes contained thick mucus and inflammation (catarrhal bronchitis). The lung tissue was swollen (oedematous), partly due to embalming, but no abscesses or tissue death were found.

Similar adhesions were present on the left side, but the left lung was slightly lighter than the right lung. The bronchial tubes and lung tissue on the left side were similar to those on the right side, but the bronchopneumonia was less extensive. In a specific area of the left lung’s lower lobe, there were small gray liver-like areas (gray hepatization). No tissue death or abscesses were found in the lung tissue.

Keeping Score: The Brains of Three Other Assassinated American Presidents  

1. Abraham Lincoln: Abraham Lincoln, the 16th President of the United States, was assassinated by John Wilkes Booth on April 14, 1865. Lincoln’s autopsy was led by Dr. Charles Leale and assisted by army surgeon Dr. J. J. Woodward. The autopsy revealed that a projectile had shattered Lincoln’s skull and entered his brain without exiting. The physicians dissected Lincoln’s brain and found a bullet. It was found intact, along with broken pieces of skull bone from the entry wound. The bullet that killed Abraham Lincoln and fragments of his skull have been preserved and are currently part of the Army Medical Museum’s collection. An autopsy was also conducted on the body of Lincoln’s assassin, John Wilkes Booth, by the same physician, J. J. Woodward.
2. William McKinley: William McKinley, the 25th President of the United States, was shot by Leon Czolgosz on September 6, 1901, and succumbed to his wounds on September 14, 1901. During McKinley’s autopsy, a team of six doctors, led by Dr. Herman Mynter, removed several organs for examination. The autopsy revealed that one of the bullets had perforated McKinley’s stomach, pancreas, and kidney before becoming lodged in his back muscles. The organs were removed for further study, a common practice during autopsies of that time. They were initially preserved in jars of formalin and later returned to McKinley’s family for a private burial ceremony in Canton, Ohio.
3. John F. Kennedy: John F. Kennedy, the 35th President of the United States, was assassinated by Lee Harvey Oswald on November 22, 1963. Following Kennedy’s death, an autopsy was conducted, during which his brain was removed from his skull. Tragically, the brain was lost, or purloined, and its whereabouts remain unknown. This revelation about the missing brain was made public ten years after the assassination when the House Select Committee on Assassinations unsealed related documents. However, other anatomical items removed during the autopsy, apart from the brain, were carefully recorded and transferred to the National Archives, where they are currently stored. (Sanner 2013)

How to footnote this page:  Reiser, Frank W. (2024). Assassinated President James Garfield’s Lung Found On eBay. Available here:  https://antiqueslides.net/president-james-garfield-assassination-purolined-lung/

References

Brown, Emma (1881) The Life and Public Service of James A. Garfield, Twentieth President of the United States. D. Lothrop and Company, Boston. pp. 517 – 518 and at:  

Sanner, Ermind (2013). The President’s Brain Is Missing and Other Mislaid Body Parts, The Guardian, London. Oct 21. https://www.theguardian.com/world/shortcuts/2013/oct/21/presidents-brain-missing-mislaid-body-parts

No byline (December 8, 1881)  “The trial of Charles Guiteau” Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper, p. 3

Online autopsy report accessed 2023:    https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/official-bulletin-the-autopsy-the-body-president-garfield

C. M. Vorce, (1883) “The Life of W. B. Rezner,” The American Microscopical Journal (Boston), June, Vol. IV, No. 6.

Luehrs had filed patents for a screw swaging machine and a bolt cutter in the News-Herald, Nov 23, 1893

“Notes,” (August 1882): American Monthly Microscopical Journal, p. 159, W. B. Rezner, Elected President, Cleveland Microscopical Society.

Cox, Jacob D. (1884) American Monthly Microscopical Journal Sept.  p. 175 (Eulogy for Woodward)

Hamilton, Allan McLane (1916). Recollections of an Alienist, Personal and Professional. New York: George H. Doran Company. Frontispiece

Backmatter, The  Microscope and Its Relationship To Medicine and Pharmacy, April 1882, Ann Arbor VII. p140

Rosen, Fred (2016). Murdering The President: Alexander Graham Bell and the Race to Save James Garfield. Potomac Books, University of Nebraska Press

Millard, Candice (2011). Destiny of the Republic. Anchor Books, NY