The Health of the First Ladies: Medical Histories from Martha Washington to Michelle Obama

by Deppisch, Ludwig M. , M. D.

  In this atmosphere there is little reason why the spouse of the leader of the American government should be exempt from such scrutiny. Such specialized treatment is unfair while at the same time average citizens going about their daily business are subjected to all sorts of intrusive surveillance against their will. After all, the decision to strive for the position of first lady was voluntary.

  In my opinion, the first lady should waive the confidentiality of her medical record. It would be an affirmative gesture on her part, since in almost any case the public will find out about any medical problems sooner or later—probably sooner than later, given the vastly expanded and intrusive media outlets.

  Chapter Notes

  Preface

  1. John B. Roberts II, Rating the First Ladies (New York: Citadel, 2003).

  2. Jonah Goldberg, “The Irony of Michelle Obama’s Water Campaign,” Los Angeles Times, October 1, 2013.

  3. Carl Sferrazza Anthony, ed., This Elevated Position: A Catalogue and Guide to the National First Ladies’ Library (Canton, OH: National First Ladies’ Library, 2003).

  4. Hillary Clinton, Living History (New York: Scribner, 2003). The former first lady’s autobiography sat near the top of nonfiction sales charts for many months in 2003; Sylvia Jukes Morris, Edith Kermit Roosevelt: Portrait of a First Lady (New York: Coward, McCann and Geoghegan, 1980). This biography of Theodore Roosevelt’s second wife, Edith Carow, was very favorably reviewed when published.

  5. Laura C. Holloway, The Ladies of the White House; or, In the Home of the Presidents; Being a Complete History of the Social and Domestic Lives of the Presidents from Washington to the Present Time, 1789–1881 (Philadelphia: Bradley, 1881).

  6. Betty Boyd Caroli, First Ladies (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987), xxii.

  7. Carl Sferrazza Anthony, First Ladies: The Saga of the Presidents’ Wives and Their Power, 1789–1961, vols. 1 and 2 (New York: William Morrow, 1990).

  8. Margaret Truman, First Ladies (New York: Random House, 1995).

  9. Robert P. Watson, The Presidents’ Wives: Reassessing the Office of the First Lady (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 2000).

  10. Lewis L. Gould, American First Ladies: Their Lives and Legacy, 2d ed. (New York: Routledge, 2001).

  11. Cynthia D. Bittinger, Grace Coolidge: Sudden Star (New York: Nova History, 2005), viii.

  12. Robert H. Ferrell, Grace Coolidge: The People’s Lady in Silent Cal’s White House (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2008), viii.

  Introduction

  1. Robert P. Watson, The Presidents’ Wives: Reassessing the Office of the First Lady (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 2000), 16n.

  2. Margaret Truman, First Ladies (New York: Random House, 1995), 17–18; Betty Boyd Caroli, First Ladies (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987), xv.

  3. Watson, The Presidents’ Wives, 10–11.

  4. Ibid.; Caroli, xv.

  5. Caroli, xv; Watson: The Presidents’ Wives, 10.

  6. Harriet Lane, Biography, National First Ladies’ Library, http://www.firstladies.org/biographies/firstladies.aspx?biography=16 (accessed February 3, 2014).

  Chapter 1

  1. Jim Murphy, An American Plague: The True and Terrifying Story of the Yellow Fever Epidemic of 1793 (New York: Clarion, 2003), 43.

  2. Abigail Adams, Biography, National First Ladies’ Library, http://www.firstladies.org/biographies/firstladies.aspx?biography=2 (accessed October 10, 2013).

  3. Robert P. Watson, First Ladies of the United States: A Biographical Dictionary (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 2001), 16–7.

  4. Catherine Allgor, A Perfect Union: Dolley Madison and the Creation of the American Nation (New York: Henry Holt, 2006), 6, 247; Watson, 33; Dolley Madison, Biography, National First Ladies’ Library, http://www.firstladies.or/biographies/firstladies.apx?biography=4 (accessed February 8, 2010; Allen C. Clark, Life and Letters of Dolly Madison (Washington: W.F. Roberts, 1914), 93, 190.

  5. Murphy, 3.

  6. http://millercenter.org/president/events/12_06.

  7. Murphy, 9.

  8. Ibid., 12–14.

  9. Ibid., 15–16, 57, 85.

  10. Douglas Southall Freeman, Washington (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1992), 638–9.

  11. Helen Bryan, Martha Washington: First Lady of Liberty (New York: John Wiley, 2002), 325; Stephen Decatur and Tobias Lear, Private Affairs of George Washington, from the Records and Accounts of Tobias Lear, Esquire, His Secretary (New York: Da Capo, 1969 [1933]), 181, 194, 205.

  12. Murphy, 42.

  13. Anne Hollingsworth Wharton, Martha Washington (New York: Scribner’s, 1899), 245; Bryan, 327; Joseph E. Fields, ed., “Worthy Partner”: The Papers of Martha Washington (Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1994), 252n; Murphy, 42; Freeman, 638–9.

  14. Allgor, 22–3.

  15. Paul Zall, Dolley Madison (Huntington, NY: Nova History, 2001), 9–10; Allgor, 25; Catharine Anthony, Dolly Madison: Her Life and Times (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1949), 49–50; Lewis L. Gould, American First Ladies: Their Lives and Legacy, 2d ed. (New York: Routledge, 2001), 22.

  16. Gould, 22; Clark, 18–9.

  17. Anthony, 49–50, the author’s definite diagnosis of yellow fever; Allgor, 25: “whether she contacted yellow fever is unclear.”

  18. Murphy, 104; Allgor, 25.

  19. Murphy, 108, removal of government to Germantown; David McCullough, John Adams (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2001), 491–2, Adams to Eastchester in 1797; Gould, Trenton in 1799.

  20. Murphy, 131

  21. Ibid., 132.

  22. “Yellow Fever Epidemic of 1793,” Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_Fever_Epidemic_of_1793 (accessed October 9, 2011).

  23. Ibid.

  24. Ibid.; Mary T. Busowki, Burke A. Cunha, et al.: “Yellow Fever,” http://emedicine.medscape.com/article/232244 (accessed October 20, 2011).

  25. Ludwig M. Deppisch, M.D.: The White House Physician: A History from Washington to George W. Bush (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2007), 9.

  26. Ibid., 11; Wharton, 105–6; Bryan, 205–6.

  27. Fields, 168–9.

  28. Martha Washington Biography, National First Ladies’ Museum.

  29. Freeman, 710; Wharton, 148–9; Bryan, 139–141; Fields, 186.

  30. Deppisch, 7–9, 14–17.

  31. Fields, 186.

  32. Ibid., 237.

  33. Ibid., 23.

  34. Patricia Brady, Martha Washington: An American Life, Google Books, http://books.google.com/books?id=vqCIBnJOwsC&pg=PT170&lpg (accessed October 11, 2011).

  35. Bryan, 72–4.

  36. Fields, 15–16, 123–4.

  37. Bryan, 139–40.

  38. Deppisch, 7–10, 12.

  39. Freeman, 740; Bryan, 365–6.

  40. Bryan, 377, 379.

  41. Gould, 23; Anthony, 165–7; Allgor, 108–110; Zall, 39–40: various names applied to Mrs. Madison’s knee abnormality; Clark, 72–3: attempts to cure malady at Montpelier; Ralph Ketcham, James Madison (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1990), 442–5: “a complaint near her knee, which from a very slight tumor had ulcerated into a very obstinate sore.”

  42. Anthony, 165–7; Allgor, 108–110; Zall, 39–40.

  43. Deppisch, 12.

  44. Ira M. Rutkow, “Philip Syng Physick,” Archives of Surgery 136, no. 8 (August 2001), 968.

  45. J. Randolph, Life and Character of Philip Syng Physick (Philadelphia: T.K. and P.G. Collins, 1839), 33.

  46. Ibid., 37.

  47. Ibid., 51–2.

  48. Ibid., 11.

  49. Zall, 39–40; Gould, 23; Ketcham, 442–5; David B. Mattern and Holly C. Shulman, eds., The Selected Letters of Dolley Payne Madison (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2003), 49; Allgor, 113; Clark, 83: “I may hopefully leave this place in a fortnight.”

  50. Mattern, 149.

  51. Ibid., 86; Ketcham, 459–60; Tiffany Cole, e-mail.

  52. Allgor, 251.

  53. Ketcham, 481.

  54. Mattern, 103; Anthony, 208.
/>
  55. Mattern, 141, 144, 169; Clark, 193.

  56. Mattern, 153; Robert Honyman, Virginia Center for Digital Research at the University of Virginia, http://www2.vcdh.virginia.edu/xslt/servlet/XSLTServlet?xml=/xml_docs/Dolley/Glossary.xml&xsl=/xml_docs/Dolley/glossary.xsl&area=glossaryr (accessed October 2011).

  57. Allgor, 357; Zall, 74.

  58. Clark, 242 (September 18, 1831), 277 (November 8, 1836).

  59. Ibid., 324.

  60. Zall, 101; Clark, 450.

  Chapter 2

  1. Woody Holton, Abigail Adams (New York: Free, 2009), 284.

  2. World Health Organization, “Malaria,” October 2011, http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs094/en/index.html (accessed November 19, 2011); Randall M. Packard, The Making of a Tropical Disease: A Short History of Malaria (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2007), xvi; “The World Malaria Report, 2010” (Malaria, WHO). Recent progress has significantly reduced the annual deaths from between 2 million and 3 million (Packard, xvi) to 850,000 (UN News Center) to 781,000 (WHO 2010). The annual case load has declined from 350 million to 500 million (Packard xvi) to 225 million (WHO 2010).

  3. Fiammetta Rocco, The Miraculous Fever Tree (Great Britain: HarperCollins, 2003), xviii, 253. Pages 170 and 173 describe malaria’s seasonality in America.

  4. Lynne Withey, Dearest Friend: A Life of Abigail Adams (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2002), 208; Holton, 262.

  5. Holton, 277.

  6. Holton, 277: “seamy and unsanitary”; http://www.irishinnyc.freeservers.com/custom.html (accessed November 20, 2011): “Irish in New York City.”

  7. Withey, 212; Holton, 277.

  8. Withey, 214–5: description of Philadelphia trip in a much weakened state.

  9. David McCullough, John Adams (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2001), 513; Withey, 220–1; Holton, 217. Plasmodium vivax is the species of protozoan parasite that was endemic to the United States when Mrs. Adams was infected and was rarely fatal by itself. An African species, plasmodium falciparum, rarely present in North America, may frequently cause fatal disease.

  10. Withey, 217.

  11. Phyllis Lee Levin, Abigail Adams (New York: St. Martin’s, 1987), 393: “Physical complaints from rheumatism and malaria increased to the point that she worried how she could manage the journey home when Congress adjourned”; Stewart Mitchell, ed., New Letters of Abigail Adams, 1788–1901 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1947), 78: Abigail Adams, letter to sister, March 20, 1792, from Philadelphia.

  12. Mitchell, 66; Abigail Adams letter to sister, December 12, 1790, from Philadelphia: “a kind friend as well as physician”; McCullough, 433 (Autumn 1791): Dr. Rush’s visits; Paul C. Nagel, The Adams Women: Abigail and Louisa Adams, Their Sisters and Daughters (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987), 85. In 1798 Abigail consulted Rush about her niece, her “holy trinity” of treatments; Levin, 448–9; Withey, 302, 306, Nabby.

  13. Deppisch, 11–12, 18, 21–2.

  14. M.L Duran-Reynals: The Fever Bark Tree: The Pageant of Quinine (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1946), 38–40; Rocco, 52.

  15. Withey, 220–1.

  16. John Ferling, John Adams (New York: Henry Holt, 1992), 368–9; McCullough, 513; Withey, 258; Howard A. Kelly, A Cyclopedia of American Medical Biography Comprising the Lives of Eminent Deceased Physicians and Surgeons from 1610 to 1910 (New York: W.B. Saunders, 1920), 1164–5.

  17. Ferling, 368–9; Withey, 258; Nagel, 137: bilious fever reference.

  18. Levin (388–9) described her early arthritic symptoms; Levin, 192, and Holton, 196, described the 1784 trans–Atlantic journey.

  19. McCullough, 433.

  20. Levin, 293.

  21. Mitchell, 78.

  22. Ibid., 131. Letter from AA in Philadelphia to sister, February 6, 1798.

  23. Levin, 388–9.

  24. Levin, 423. In March 1807, AA had barely recovered from a rheumatic attack; Holton, 407. In the 1815–6 winter, she suffered through her usual cold weather ailments, especially rheumatism.

  25. Holton, 109–114; Withey, 83–4.

  26. Holton, 21.

  27. Jennifer Carrell, The Speckled Monster: A Historical Tale of Battling Smallpox (New York: Plume/Penguin, 2004), 392–3.

  28. Holton, 282, 284, 307; Ellis, 163; Levin, 294; Withey, 217, 220; Joseph J. Ellis, First Family: Abigail and John Adams (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2010), 163.

  29. Levin, 305.

  30. Holton, 307.

  31. McCullough, 447.

  32. Holton, 307–9.

  33. Holton, 311, 315.

  34. Ferling, 368–9; Holton, 322; Levin, 356, McCullough, 526; Nagel, 12.

  35. McCullough, 530–2; Holton, 328.

  36. Levin, 388–9.

  37. Ellis, 194.

  38. Holton, 324–6; Withey, 261.

  39. Robert P. Watson, The Presidents’ Wives: Reassessing the Office of the First Lady (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 2000), 138.

  40. Walter R. Borneman, Polk: The Man Who Transformed the Presidency and America (New York: Random House, 2008), 13.

  41. John Reed Bumgarner, Sarah Childress Polk: A Biography of a Remarkable First Lady (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 1997), 15, 26.

  42. Barbara Bennett Peterson, Sarah Childress Polk: First Lady of Tennessee and Washington (New York: Nova History, 2002), 5–8, 19.

  43. Borneman, 7–8.

  44. Bumgarner, 34; Jimmie Lou Sparkman Claxton, Eighty-Eight Years with Sarah Polk (New York: Vantage, 1972), 36.

  45. Bumgarner, 94.

  46. Milo Milton Quaife, The Diary of James K. Polk During His Presidency (Chicago: A.C. McClurg, 1910; Claxton, 87–8.

  47. Quaife; Bumgarner, 92–4; Borneman, 282.

  48. Deppisch, 20–23, 30.

  49. Ibid., 20–31.

  50. Quaife, May 4; Claxton, 95–6.

  51. Bill Severn, Frontier President: The Life of James K. Polk (New York: Ives Washburn, 1965), 67–117.

  52. Bumgarner, 150–1.

  53. John Shaw, Lucretia (New York: Nova History, 2004), 89.

  54. Ibid., 71.

  55. Ibid., 100–102; Harry James Brown and Frederick D. Williams, eds., The Diary of James A. Garfield, 1878–1881, vol. 4 (Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 1981 [May 4, 1881]).

  56. Allan Peskin, Garfield (Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 1978), 573.

  57. Deppisch, 48, lists Lucretia Garfield’s physicians; 18 quotes Thomas Jefferson’s observation.

  58. Ludwig M. Deppisch, “Homeopathic Medicine and Presidential Health,” PHAROS 60, no. 4 (Fall 1997), 5–10; James C. Clark, The Murder of James A. Garfield: The President’s Last Days and the Trial and Execution of His Assassin (Jefferson NC: McFarland, 1993), 42–3; Peskin, 573; Shaw, 100–102.

  59. Shaw, 100–102.

  60. Clark, 51–115; Shaw, 100–102.

  61. Shaw, 100–102.

  62. Clark, 42.

  63. Peskin, 573.

  64. Candice Millard, Destiny of the Republic: A Tale of Madness, Medicine and the Murder of a President (New York: Doubleday, 2011), 112.

  65. John Duffy, “The Impact of Malaria on the South,” in Disease and Distinctiveness in the American South, ed. Todd L. Savitt and James Harvey Young, (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1988), 29–54; Margaret Humphreys, Malaria, Poverty, Race and Public Health in the United States (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001), 40.

  66. Ibid.

  67. Randall M. Packard, The Making of a Tropical Disease: A Short History of Malaria (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2007), 7.

  68. History of the Medical Society of the District of Columbia (Washington, D.C.: Medical Society of the District of Columbia, 1909), 143.

  69. New York Times, July 16, 1879.

  70. Shaw, 119.

  71. Rocco, 170–2.

  72. Deppisch, 23.

  73. Peskin, 13.

  74. Deppisch, 24.

  75. John G. Sotos, The Physical Lincoln Sourcebook: An Annotated Medical History of Abraham Lincoln and His F
amily (Mount Vernon, VA: Mount Vernon Book Systems, 2008), 146.

  76. Deppisch, 127.

  77. William S. McFeely, Grant: A Biography (New York: W.W. Norton, 1982), 63.

  78. Edmund Morris, Colonel Roosevelt (New York: Random House, 2010), 16.

  Chapter 3

  1. Lewis L. Gould, American First Ladies: Their Lives and Legacy, 2d ed. (New York: Routledge, 2001), 67.

  2. The number of children that resulted from the John/Letitia mating remains uncertain. Craig Hart, A Genealogy of the Wives of American Presidents and Their First Two Generations of Descent (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2004), 228–9, lists eight children. Christopher Leahy, “Torn Between Family and Politics: John Tyler’s Struggle for Balance,” Virginia Magazine of History and Biography 114, no. 3 (2006), 322–355), and Lewis L. Gould, American First Ladies: Their Lives and Legacy, 2d ed. (New York: Routledge, 2001, 66) counted nine pregnancies. All agree that seven Tyler children attained adulthood.

  3. William Degregorio, The Complete Book of U.S. Presidents (New York: Wings, 1993), 153–4.

  4. Leahy, 330.

  5. Gould, 67: “presided over the governor’s mansion with charm”; Washington Globe, September 12, 1842: “then in perfect health and adorned with beauty.”

  6. Leahy, 331, 345.

  7. Ibid., 345–6.

  8. Lyon G. Tyler, The Letters and Times of the Tylers, vol. 1 (Richmond, VA: Whittet & Shepperson, 1884), 562, Letter from John Tyler to Mary Tyler, June 16, 1832.

  9. Laura C. Holloway, The Ladies of the White House, or, In the Home of the Presidents; Being a Complete History of the Social and Domestic Lives of the Presidents from Washington to the Present Time, 1789–1881 (Philadelphia: Bradley, 1881), 375; this part of Virginia seceded in 1863 to become the state of West Virginia.

  10. Robert Byrd, “The Greenbrier,” Congressional Record, 106th Congress (1999–2000), July 10, 2000, http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?r106:S10JY0–0008 (accessed October 19, 2013).

  11. Washington Globe, obituary (September 13, 1842); Baltimore Sun, obituary (September 14, 1842); Holloway, 387; Gould, 67; Carl Sferrazza Anthony, First Ladies: The Saga of the Presidents’ Wives and Their Power, 1789–1961, vols. 1 and 2 (New York: William Morrow, 1990) on 127 states: “Although Mrs. Tyler’s stroke evidently took her powers of speech in its first stage, she regained it”; The Baltimore Sun (above) suggests otherwise: “The loss of speech, to an extent, was one of the unhappy effects of the attack”; The description of Letitia’s silent joy over her son’s marriage is from Elizabeth Tyler Coleman, Priscilla Cooper Tyler and the American Scene, 1816–1889 (Birmingham: University of Alabama Press, 1955), 69.