> Most historians and medical experts now believe that Garfield probably would have survived his wound had the doctors been more capable.[66][67] However, most American doctors of the day did not believe in anti-sepsis measures or the need for cleanliness to prevent infection.[68] Several inserted their unwashed fingers into the wound to probe for the bullet, and one doctor punctured Garfield's liver in doing so. Also, Bliss had supplanted Garfield's physician Jedediah Hyde Baxter. Bliss and the other doctors who attended Garfield had guessed wrong about the path of the bullet in his body; they had probed rightward into his back instead of leftward, missing the location of the bullet but creating a new channel which filled with pus. The autopsy discovered this error and revealed pneumonia in both lungs and a body that was filled with pus due to uncontrolled sepsis.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_of_James_A._Garf...

That's a book review of a readable book that makes the case quite compellingly.

> I recently read George Bernard Shaw's The Doctor's Dilemma and experienced an unexpected sense of insult on behalf of my profession. In this celebrated play, Shaw serially indicts various kinds of late 19th century doctor—the hypocrite, the self publicist, and (most dangerous of all) the blinkered zealot. While I admired the plot construction, I suspected that Shaw had created such character extremes for comic effect. However, having read David Wootton's Bad Medicine, I am now no longer insulted and, on behalf of my profession, feel somewhat grateful to Shaw for his restraint. For, as Wootton painstakingly argues in this short but undoubtedly explosive new book, the history of medicine has been nothing less than a failure and doctors have been the culprits.

EDIT: Some nonfiction: an account of quacks from the 19th century https://archive.org/details/monthylygazette00mdgoog/page/n37...

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victorian_Pharmacy