The President Is a Sick Man

by Matthew Algeo

  Question: You say there will be a biopsy on it?

  Speakes: There’ll be a routine check of it, yes.

  Question: Larry, is the test for cancer? What kind of test is it?

  Speakes: I don’t know. Just a routine examination, as you would if you had a piece removed from your face.

  But unlike the newspapermen in the barn at Gray Gables, these reporters were not willing to give the president the benefit of the doubt.

  “I finally acknowledged that what was being done was a biopsy,” Speakes later wrote, “although I described the President’s health as ‘excellent, A-1.’”

  After the briefing, Speakes fired off an angry note to the First Lady. “The press questions will not go away and will only become worse if we seek to avoid the obvious question,” he wrote. In response, Mrs. Reagan came up with a new cover story: a rogue pimple. In a note to Speakes she wrote, “Why can’t we just say—You asked about the Band-Aid on the Pres. nose. He had had a pimple on his nose which he picked at & irritated it.”

  The White House eventually released a fifty-word statement that omitted the words “cancer” and “biopsy.” Speakes, believing his credibility was at stake, pointedly refused to attach his name to the statement. The biopsy revealed that the lesion was a basal cell carcinoma—skin cancer. On August 5, 1985, President Reagan himself finally admitted that he had had a cancerous growth removed—an admission that Grover Cleveland never had to make.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I AM DEEPLY GRATEFUL for all the people who have helped me with this project. My agent, Jane Dystel, believed in it from the beginning. Without her hard work and stellar advice, this book never would have seen the light of day. Thank you, Jane.

  Jerry Pohlen, my editor at Chicago Review Press, was, as usual, an absolute joy to work with (even after his basement flooded—twice).

  The following institutions assisted me in ways large and small, and each was indispensible: Alexander Mitchell Public Library, Aberdeen, South Dakota; Association of American Medical Colleges; Bowdoin College Library; British Dental Association Dental Museum, London; Centro Studi Americani, Rome; College of Physicians of Philadelphia; Columbia University Libraries, Rare Book and Manuscript Library; Connecticut State Library; District of Columbia Public Library; Free Library of Philadelphia; Frohring Library, John Cabot University, Rome; Georgetown University Library; Greenwich Library, Greenwich, Connecticut; Grover Cleveland Birthplace State Historic Site, Caldwell, New Jersey; Historical Society of the Town of Greenwich, Connecticut; Library of Congress, Law Library of Congress; Library of Congress, Manuscript Reading Room; Library of Congress, Newspaper and Current Periodical Reading Room; Los Angeles Public Library; Maine Public Broadcasting Network; Marine Museum at Fall River, Massachusetts; Museum of American Finance, New York; New Haven Free Public Library, New Haven, Connecticut; New York Academy of Medicine; New York Public Library; New York University Health Sciences Libraries; Portland Public Library, Portland, Maine; Thomas Jefferson University Archives and Special Collections; United States Navy, Naval Historical Center; United States Senate Historical Office; Van Pelt Library, University of Pennsylvania; and Yale University Library, Manuscripts and Archives.

  Special thanks to John S. J. Brooks, M.D., Chair, Department of Pathology, Pennsylvania Hospital, Philadelphia; Anna Dhody and Evi Numen, College of Physicians of Philadelphia; and Gregory N. Prah, M.D., Chief of Anesthesiology, Brattleboro Memorial Hospital, Brattleboro, Vermont.

  In the early stages of this project, Gretchen Worden, the director of the Mütter Museum, was especially kind and helpful. She also had a good sense of humor. I was walking through the museum with her one day when I spotted a freeze-dried housecat on display. I asked her if she liked cats. “Of course,” she said. “They’re wonderful disease vectors!” Almost single-handedly, Gretchen turned the Mütter into a world-class cultural institution. Her death at the age of fifty-six in 2004 was a great loss.

  My sister Ann read an early version of the manuscript and offered valuable advice. My brother Jim patiently answered my questions about all things medical. My brother Howard also offered much advice, some of which was actually helpful.

  I would be remiss if I neglected to thank William Williams Keen for publishing his story about the operation in 1917, and Frances Folsom Cleveland Preston for allowing him to do so. If not for them, the truth might never have come to light.

  Finally, this book would not have been possible without the love and support of my own First Lady, my beautiful and talented wife, the former Miss Allyson McCollum. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: Allyson is the best girl in the world.

  CAST OF CHARACTERS

  ELIAS C. BENEDICT

  Also known as the Commodore, Benedict was a banking magnate and a close friend of Grover Cleveland. It was on his yacht, the Oneida, that the secret operation on Cleveland took place on July 1, 1893.

  JOSEPH BRYANT

  A prominent New York surgeon and the Cleveland family’s physician, Bryant assembled the dream team of surgeons that operated on the president. Bryant was also the lead surgeon during the operation.

  FRANCES CLEVELAND

  The youngest First Lady in history, Frances Folsom married Grover Cleveland when she was just twenty-one years old. At the time of the operation on her husband, Frances was pregnant with the couple’s second child.

  GROVER CLEVELAND

  Twice elected president of the United States, Cleveland was diagnosed with cancer early in his second term. At the time the country was in the midst of an economic crisis that came to be known as the Panic of 1893.

  CHARLES A. DANA

  The publisher of the New York Sun, Dana hired E. J. Edwards in 1879. His great rival was New York World publisher Joseph Pulitzer.

  ELISHA JAY (E. J.) EDWARDS

  At the New York Sun and, later, the Philadelphia Press, Edwards established himself as one of the great reporters of his generation. Writing under the pen name Holland, he broke the story of the president’s secret operation.

  JOHN ERDMANN

  A protégé of Joseph Bryant, Erdmann was the youngest member of the surgical team that operated on the president. At the time of the operation, he was just twenty-nine.

  KASSON GIBSON

  A New York dentist and prosthodontist, Gibson fashioned a vulcanized-rubber prosthetic device to plug the hole in Cleveland’s mouth after the operation. This restored the president’s normal appearance and speaking voice.

  FERDINAND HASBROUCK

  A dentist who was also an experienced anesthetist, Hasbrouck extracted teeth and administered nitrous oxide during the operation on the president. His missed appointment the day after the operation would have profound consequences.

  EDWARD JANEWAY

  An accomplished surgeon, Janeway monitored the president’s vital signs during the operation.

  WILLIAM WILLIAMS (W. W.) KEEN

  Perhaps the most famous surgeon in the country at the time, Keen assisted Joseph Bryant during the operation.

  DANIEL LAMONT

  A former newspaper reporter, Lamont was Cleveland’s private secretary in his first administration and his secretary of war in his second. He also acted as the president’s unofficial press secretary.

  ALEXANDER K. MCCLURE

  As publisher of the Philadelphia Times, McClure spearheaded a campaign to discredit E. J. Edwards and his story about the secret operation in the rival Philadelphia Press.

  ROBERT LINCOLN O’BRIEN

  As Cleveland’s private secretary in his second administration, O’Brien helped Daniel Lamont orchestrate a cover-up of the secret operation.

  ROBERT M. O’REILLY

  As the White House physician, O’Reilly helped organize the secret operation, during which he administered ether.

  JOSEPH PULITZER

  As publisher of the New York World, Pulitzer was an early practitioner of yellow journalism.

  CHARLES EMORY SMITH

  As publisher of the Philadel
phia Press, Smith lured E. J. Edwards away from the New York Sun in 1889. It was in the Press that Edwards’s explosive account of the operation was published.

  ADLAI STEVENSON

  The grandfather of the 1952 and 1956 Democratic presidential nominee of the same name, Stevenson was Cleveland’s vice president in his second administration. Unlike the president, Stevenson was a silverite and opposed repeal of the Silver Purchase Act.

  SOURCES

  THERE WERE CERTAIN CHALLENGES in researching and writing a century-old story that was never meant to be told. For one thing, the main characters are long dead. Fortunately, however, many of them bequeathed their papers to institutions that have made them available to the public. These papers were invaluable to my research:

  Grover Cleveland (papers held by the Library of Congress)

  Stephen Crane (Columbia University Library)

  Kasson C. Gibson (New York Academy of Medicine)

  Charles S. Hamlin (Library of Congress)

  William Williams Keen (College of Physicians of Philadelphia)

  Daniel S. Lamont (Library of Congress)

  Robert Lincoln O’Brien (Library of Congress)

  Richard Olney (Library of Congress)

  Most valuable were the papers of William Williams Keen. In addition to being a prolific writer, Dr. Keen was also an inveterate saver. He meticulously collected correspondence and clippings related to the operation in a large scrapbook, an irreplaceable resource that was crucial to my research.

  Unfortunately, Elisha Jay Edwards’s papers have not survived. One summer morning in 1908, children playing with matches ignited a fire that engulfed much of Greenwich, Connecticut. Miraculously, no one was killed, but the blaze consumed a dozen homes, including E. J.’s. A lifetime of notes, letters, and clippings went up in flames, including the priceless records of his reporting on the Cleveland operation and the Sugar Trust scandal.

  With the help of the archivists at Yale University, however, I was able to piece together Edwards’s biography. Especially helpful were the records contained in his alumni files, as well as his yearbooks and class reunion books.

  My account is also based on contemporaneous newspaper reports. I scoured dozens of papers on microfilm, in bound volumes, and, through the miracle of the Internet, online in the comfort of my home. These papers are cited in the text. I am deeply indebted to the newspaper reporters, mostly anonymous, whose work in the late nineteenth century made mine in the early twenty-first much easier. Their names may be lost to history, but their work continues to inform us.

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