While Roosevelt was campaigning in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, on October 14, 1912, a saloonkeeper named John Schrank shot him, but the
bullet lodged in his chest only after penetrating his steel eyeglass
case and passing through a thick (50 pages) single-folded copy of the
speech he was carrying in his jacket. Roosevelt, as an experienced
hunter and anatomist, correctly concluded that since he was not coughing
blood, the bullet had not completely penetrated the chest wall to his
lung, and so declined suggestions he go to the hospital immediately.
Instead, he delivered his scheduled speech with blood seeping into his
shirt. He spoke for 90 minutes. His opening comments to the gathered
crowd were, "Ladies and gentlemen, I don't know whether you fully
understand that I have just been shot; but it takes more than that to
kill a Bull Moose." Afterwards, probes and x-ray showed that the bullet had traversed three inches (76 mm) of tissue and lodged in Roosevelt's chest muscle but did not penetrate the pleura,
and it would be more dangerous to attempt to remove the bullet than to
leave it in place. Roosevelt carried it with him for the rest of his
life.
According to documents found on [John] Schrank after the attempted assassination, Schrank had written that he was advised by the ghost of William McKinley in a dream to avenge his death, pointing to a picture of Theodore Roosevelt.
The bullet, designated by the arrow in the lower left of the image, overlies the anterior end of the right fourth rib.
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