Doctor Willard Bliss (August 18, 1825 – February 21, 1889; his given name was Doctor) was an American physician and pseudo-expert in ballistic trauma, who treated President James A. Garfield after his shooting in July 1881 until his death two and a half months later. Early life and career D.W. Bliss was born in Brutus, New York, to Obediah Bliss (1792–1863) and Marilla Pool (1795–1857). Bliss's first and middle names (Doctor and Willard) were inspired by Samuel Willard, a surgeon from New England. During his youth, the Bliss family lived in Savoy, Massachusetts. Bliss had one brother, Zenas (July 4, 1832 – April 23, 1877). Bliss treated Zachary Taylor for malaria at Fort Jesup, Louisiana, in 1844. Bliss studied at Cleveland Medical College, submitting his thesis on Pseudarthrosis or False-Joint in 1849. He advertised and sold cundurango, incorrectly claiming it as a "wonderful remedy for cancer, syphilis, scrofula, ulcer...and all other chronic blood diseases", for which he was expelled from the Washington, D.C. Medical Society in 1853. During the American Civil War, Bliss was a surgeon with the Third Michigan Infantry. Bliss later became superintendent at Washington D.C.'s Armory Square Hospital; he continued to practice in the city after the war had ended. In April 1863, he accepted a $500 bribe to use a certain inventor's stove in the hospital and was held for several days in the Old Capitol Prison. Bliss was expelled from the District of Columbia Medical Society for his support of homeopathy and his opposition to the society's exclusion of black members. After having his career threatened for embracing the novel field of homeopathy, Bliss was hesitant to accept another new movement in medicine, the antiseptic methods proposed by Joseph Lister. Bliss was mentioned in correspondence by Walt Whitman, who claimed that Bliss answered the House of Representatives' proposal for his pension in 1887 by saying, "I am of opinion that no one person who assisted in the hospitals during the war accomplished so much good to the soldiers and for the Government as Mr. Whitman". Treatment of James Garfield On July 2, 1881, Bliss was summoned by Robert Todd Lincoln after James A. Garfield had been shot at the Baltimore and Potomac Railroad Station in Washington, D.C. Bliss examined Garfield's bullet wounds with his fingers and metal probes, concluding the bullet was in the President's liver. Bliss immediately commandeered as Garfield's doctor, most likely to