[11][14] Bliss later became superintendent at Washington, D.C.'s Armory Square Hospital; he continued to practice in the city after the war had ended.

[16] After having his career threatened for embracing the novel field of homeopathy, Bliss was hesitant to accept another new movement in medicine, the antiseptic methods proposed by Joseph Lister.

[4] On July 2, 1881, Bliss was summoned by Robert Todd Lincoln after James A. Garfield had been shot by Charles J. Guiteau at the Baltimore and Potomac Railroad Station in Washington, D.C. Bliss examined Garfield's bullet wounds with his fingers and metal probes, concluding the bullet was in the President's liver.

[17] Two days following the shooting, Bliss summoned two surgeons, David Hayes Agnew and Frank Hastings Hamilton, to help.

As Garfield's condition grew increasingly worse and he became unable to keep down his food, Bliss began rectally feeding him.

[15] Bliss also invited Alexander Graham Bell to test his metal detector on the President, hoping that it would locate the bullet.

[15]: 294 Some believed even at the time that Bliss was guilty of malpractice, a claim unsuccessfully raised by Guiteau's attorneys during the trial.