Why Did James Garfield Die From a Harmless Bullet?

David Senra says James Garfield almost certainly would have survived if doctors had left the bullet alone. Lodged in the fatty tissue below and behind his pancreas, the bullet was no continuing danger. Nature formed a capsule of thick, strong, fibrous tissue around it, walled it off from the rest of the body, and rendered it entirely harmless.

Shot 15 years later, the bullet in his back would have been found quickly by x-ray images and the wound treated with antiseptic surgery. He might have been back on his feet within weeks. With modern medical care he likely would have spent no more than a few nights in the hospital. The doctors instead rejected Lister's ideas. They kept probing the wound with a finger and instruments because they wanted to remove the bullet, even though they knew a bullet was not necessarily fatal.

Just 16 years after the end of the Civil War, hundreds of men were walking around with lead balls still inside them. The man who delivered Garfield's assassin to jail had lived the better part of his life with a bullet in his brain from a Civil War wound and appeared none the worse for it. The critical difference was that the anonymous men had received little, if any, medical care.