It was the third and final shot that killed Kennedy, instantly. The second shot actually went through his upper torso but missed anything vital. Had he ducked at that point, or if the Secret Service had been quicker to respond, he would almost certainly have survived the attempt and recovered from his wound.
IIRC, the doctors attempted to remove the ball from Lincoln’s brain, but every time they tried his body responded in an extreme manner. The best they could do for him was remove him to a bed across the street and try to make him comfortable until he died. At the end of the ordeal, the bed and pillows were drenched with blood; he kept breathing normally so long at the wound remained open.
Poor use of the word “ago.” 
It should have read “several decades earlier” or “before.”
With modern IT support, would any of those links have survived?
Kennedy had Addison’s disease. Because of this it was likely that the second shot would have killed him.
However, if he had modern medicine all his life it is possible he would not have been prescribed the steroids which gave him addison’s disease.
Interesting point..Kennedy was a VERY sick man (indeed)-he had Addison’s disease and a host of other ailments. Steroids had only recently been discovered, and the high doses given him caused massive bone loss (his spine was greatly weakened). Kennedy was also addicted to a variety of drugs-his personal “Dr. Feelgood” injected him with a weird cocktail of drugs, including stimulants and steroids. I suspect JFK may well have died in office.
I’ve read accounts of Reagan’s surgery stating that his recovery would have been a lot speedier had they left the bullet in him, but just imagine the hue and cry if word had gotten out that a bullet had been left in the POTUS.
The steroids were being used to treat his Addison’s disease. Most likely, he was being given ACTH or cortisone, which are very crude precursors to prednisone and other drugs commonly used nowadays.
On the topic of FDR, if he had been born after 1955, he would’ve been vaccinated and not gotten polio in the first place, and would certainly have lived much longer.
I just started reading ‘The President and the Assassin’ today so I’m sure I’ll be back soon with an opinion on McKinley’s likelihood of survival!
I’m trying to remember where I read that he would have naturally slumped down after the first or second shot if his back brace hadn’t kept him artificially upright and in the line of fire. The source isn’t coming, though.
I’ve read that he came a lot closer to dying than the media/the country ever knew.
He very well may not have had polio.
Especially since it was an exploding bullet that stopped within an inch of his heart. He was very, very lucky that the round was a dud.
Uhmmm … why? 
Lincoln was shot in the head, execution-style. Even today, the best you could hope for would be survival with severe brain damage (similar to Gabby Giffords). A full recovery would be miraculous.
Kennedy, I doubt he could be saved, even if he’d been shot in the operating room of the ER, and they started work immediately.
McKinley and Garfield would probably have survived today.
Reagan, if he had lived in the 19th Century, might easily have died. It would be very iffy, much like McKinley or Garfield.
As for the natural deaths:
William Henry Harrison and Zachary Taylor would have survived.
Warren G. Harding would probably have survivied, altho his cause of death has always been a bit unlear, so we really can’t say for sure.
Roosevelt is a bit complicated. As others have mentioned, these days he wouldn’t have had polio in the first place. Still, given his health at the time, he likely wasn’t long for this world no matter how good his heath care was. They maybe could have gotten him thru his last term, but even that’s kinda optimistic.
If that happened today, Tony Stark could have made him an Ironman suit. 
Imagine him wearing *that *to the Iceland summit.
I remember reading that the doctors wanted to extract the bullet from McKinley’s stomach, but they were unable to find it due to his girth. He eventually succumbed to pertonitis (though Wiki says gangrene).
What was really ironic was that there was a working X-ray machine on display not far away at the Exhibition. Had anyone thought of using it, they could have found and extracted the bullet easily, before the wound became septic.
No. 1981 was three decades ago. Knowledgeable users of the English language consider “several” to be significantly more than “three”, and would consider “three” to be “a few”.
Actually, in a state of stasis…
Fire up Firefox, add this to your Bookmarks bar ( you don’t need to keep the bar on display, just open it when you need this tool ), and when you get a 404, hit it and any versions online, say from the Internet Archive or elsewhere, will display. It succeeds about 70% of the time, I’d estimate.
'Geocities, how I love ya. how I love ya
My dear old AOL.
I’d give the world to be among the folks in
Y-A-H-O-O even though my mammy’s waiting for me,
praying for me down by the AOL.
Fascinating topic and read. I don’t know that it fits into the “President” discussion (but I hope it’s not considered a total derailment of the thread), but any opinions / documentaries you may have seen, about whether Robert Kennedy or Martin Luther King could have possibly survived their wounds, if they had been shot in this day and age?