The man who shot President McKinley didn't actually kill him—his doctors did.

The Bullet That Found McKinley: Eight Days of Dying in Buffalo

How an anarchist's revolver and Victorian medicine killed an American president

President McKinley survived an assassin's bullet, but died eight days later from medical incompetence.

The receiving line at Buffalo's Temple of Music moved slowly through the September heat. President William McKinley stood beneath red, white, and blue bunting, his hand extended toward the thousands who had come to see him at the Pan-American Exposition. At 4:07 PM on September 6, 1901, a young man with a bandaged right hand shuffled forward. Under the white handkerchief was a .32 caliber Iver Johnson revolver.

Leon Czolgosz fired twice. The first bullet grazed McKinley's ribs. The second tore into his abdomen, perforating his stomach and lodging somewhere near his pancreas. As Secret Service agents tackled the shooter, McKinley gasped, "Don't let them hurt him."

What followed was eight days of medical theater that would haunt American medicine for decades. The finest surgeons of the age operated by the light of mirrors reflecting sunlight—the exposition's electric generator had been redirected to power the fairground's displays. Dr. Matthew Mann, a gynecologist with no experience in abdominal gunshot wounds, probed the wound but couldn't locate the bullet. An X-ray machine sat unused in another building, just a short walk away. No one thought to use it.

By September 14, 1901, g…

💡 An X-ray machine capable of locating the bullet was on display at the same exposition where McKinley was shot, but doctors refused to use it, fearing the technology was too experimental.