2 ms·
Infection/lack of sanitation and no modern way of treating infections would have been a huge factor. People would have survived the initial attack and lasted a
by mc32 4y ago
Infection/lack of sanitation and no modern way of treating infections would have been a huge factor. People would have survived the initial attack and lasted a week or two in agony while the infection led to eventual death.
Even much later during the US civil war, amputations were common as an attempt to stave off infection cauterizing the would on the limb.
- dredmorbius 4y agoAs late as 1881 (James Garfield) and quite possibly 1901 (William McKinley), US presidents subject to assassination attempts died far more because of the interventions of doctors than despite them. In Garfield's case, doctors probed his wounds and sought the bullet with ungloved and unsterilised bare fingers. The Wikipedia account of McKinley's post-shooting medical treatment also describes manual probing of the wound, though it's not clear whether or not antisceptic practices were followed, and given that the bullet had perforated both the stomach and colon, it's likely that visceral matter would have given rise to the gangrene which ultimately killed him regardless. Broad-spectrum antibiotics were of course not available.