“If I can’t save him, no one can,” stated Dr. Doctor Willard Bliss (yes, his first name was Doctor) after the July 2, 1881 shooting of President James A. Garfield.
A bullet had lodged itself somewhere in President Garfield's abdomen. Although Joseph Lister's pioneering work in antisepsis was known to American doctors, with Lister himself having visited America in 1876, few of them had confidence in it, and none of his advocates were among Garfield's treating physicians.
Bliss and others proceded to probe the wound with unsterilized fingers and instruments. One of the doctors accidentally punctured Garfield's liver while probing the wound. Bliss guessed incorrectly about the path of the bullet, and ended up creating a different channel in Garfield's back.
Alexander Graham Bell developed a primitive metal detector in order to find the bullet, and carried out successful tests on civil war veterans who still had bullets or shrapnel lodged in their bodies. He also had butchers hide bullets in cuts of meat, and was able to consistently find them with the detector. However, Bell was unable to find the bullet in Garfield's body, for several reasons: 1) the President was lying on one of the few beds in the country that had metal springs, and 2) Bliss only allowed Bell to scan the one side of Garfield's body that they believed to contain the bullet.
(An X-ray would have easily revealed the bullet's location, but that technology would not be invented for another 14 years.)
Some of Bliss's other treatment methods are even more disturbing, so I won't detail them here. 79 days after the shooting, Garfield died of a ruptured splenic artery aneurysm, following sepsis and bronchial pneumonia. Most historians and medical experts now believe that Garfield probably would have survived his wound had the doctors been more capable. If you or I were to suffer similar injuries today, we would most likely be able to return home after 2-3 days in the hospital.
I'm certainly thankful for all of the advances in medicine since 1881!
Hopefully, your extraction skills exceed those of Dr. Bliss.
Approaching this cache from the East will be easiest, and should keep you from accidentally encroaching on private property. The nearby railway that once served this industrial park is now inactive and overgrown.
Please use stealth when searching for the cache -- For instance, I would suggest that you postpone your search if a soccer game is underway.
This cache lies within the limits of Victory Park, and has been placed with the permission of the City of New Hope.