St. Paul daily globe. [volume] (Saint Paul, Minn.) 1884-1896, 1896-03-22

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The results were of no value to Gar
field, but they brought out inventions
which have been worth much to med
zeal science. These inventions were
made by Prof. Alexander Graham Bell,
the inventor of the telephone. 1t was
he who was given Icharge of the mat
ter of locating the bullet by electricity,
and during visit which L made to his
laboratory he showed me the instru-
ment which was used for this purpose.
1t was a piece of mahogany board Of
about the size and shape of flatiron
1t had a handle upon it's top, and the
bottom of the board was covered with
green cloth,
LOCATING THE BULLET.
THAT said Prof Bell, lis the in
strument with which we attempted to
find the bullet in President Garfeld's
body. There is an electric coil inside
that board. and it is so made that
when the board is moved over any
thing in which there is lead or other
metallic substances it Will buzz Now,
if you held bullet in your hand, and,
having the proper electric connections.
should rub this over, the back of your
hand, you would find that the board
would make loud ,buzzing noise, and
that it would buzz the loudest when
just over the bullet. When Garfield
was lying almost at the point of death
with the bullet in his body a number
of inventions We're proposed for locat-
ing the exact position of the bullet.
Several inventions were sent here by
electricians to be tried The matter of
Iii hn
my hands. I invented this balance
and we tested it., but failed.
"How did YOU happen to fail, Mr..
Bell" said I, ''if the machine will To-
cate the existence of metal, as you de-
scribe?"
II will tell you" replied Prof Bell.
we took the balance to Garfield's
bedside, and DR.. Hamilton and myself
tried it upon Pfesidelt Garfield. We
| moved it over his body. To our sur
prise, the instrument buzzed whenever
it came near him. According to it he
was full of lead and we gave the mat
ter UP in despair. Tt worried me ex-
ceedingly. 1 could not see why the
balance had acted as it had. But a
day or two later, in thinking about it..
l came to the conclusion that there
must have been something metallic
about the bed upon which President
Garfield was lying. 1 inquired, and
found that his mattress rested on a net
Of steel springs 1t was the steel that
made the machine buzz We did not,
however, try it again., and the matter
was allowed to drop.
THE INVENTIONS A SUCCESS.
'It was not long after this Mr.. Bell
continued that / tested the invention
again, and this time successfully. 1t
was in the case of an army officer who
! had been shot in the neck. All attempts
| to locate the bullet failed, until we at
| tempted to do it by electricity We
! found, through this instrument. that
| the bullet lay under one of the ribs in
the chest, and took it out In locating
the bullet we moved the instrument
up and down the mans body until we
| came to the point where it buzzed We
then drew two parallel lines UP and
down the chest on each side of where
the noise occurred. We moved the ball
ance back and forth sScross these lines
until it came again to the point of buzz
zing, where we-dreW other lines at
square, in which we thought was the
bullet. We found the ball as soon as
we probed for it. tAAfaport of our sue
cess was published iDthe surgical jour-
nails. / thought that the result would
be a great demand for these instru-
mentS. | made a number of them, but
no one seemed I'd want them, and they
remained here until the death of Dr.
Frank Hamilton.~Df. Hamilton con-
sidered the invention very valuable,
but he died before he could take it up.