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

by Deppisch, Ludwig M. , M. D.

23. Nichols, 203, Taylor, Venzke, and Minor all describe Jane Pierce’s prayers for her husband’s defeat; Davidson for Bennie’s comments; Nichols, 204: “the results were too dreadful.”

  24. Larry Gara: The Presidency of Franklin Pierce (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1991), 183–4.

  25. C-SPAN: 2009 Historians Presidential Leadership Survey, 2012.

  26. Minor

  27. Ibid.

  28. Davidson.

  29. Louisa Adams quote as reported in Paul C. Nagel, The Adams Women: Abigail and Louisa Adams, Their Sisters and Daughters (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987).

  30. William Degregorio, The Complete Book of U.S. Presidents (New York: Wing, 1993), 94; Joan Ridder Challinor, “Louisa Catherine Johnson Adams: The Price of Ambition,” PhD diss., American University, Washington, D.C., April 20, 1982; Paul C. Nagel, Descent from Glory: Four Generations of the John Adams Family (New York: Oxford University Press, 1983), 63; Michael O’Brien, Mrs. Adams in Winter (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2010), xv.

  31. Alan Levenson, M.D., e-mail, April 15, 2011.

  32. Jonathan R.T. Davidson, Kathryn M. Connor and Marvin Swartz: “Mental Illness in U.S. Presidents Between 1776 and 1974: A Review of Biographical Sources,” Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease 194, no. 1, (January 2006): 47–51.

  33. Nagel, Descent from Glory, 77–80, 88, 122, 133, 147, 157–9, 171–3, 178.

  34. Louisa Adams, The Adventures of a Nobody: Autobiographical Sketch, Begun 1 July 1840 (Boston: Massachusetts Historical Society, 1956).

  35. Challinor, “Mr. Adams has always accustomed me to believe that Women had nothing to do with politics.”

  36. Nagel, The Adams Women, 188–9.

  37. Nagel,: Descent from Glory, 107–8, 170.

  38. Degregorio, 94.

  39. Robert Remini, John Quincy Adams (New York: Henry Holt, 2002), 30.

  40. Paul C. Nagel, John Quincy Adams: A Public Life, a Private Life (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997), 253.

  41. Presidential Notes: “Louisa Catherine Adams,” http://www.essortment.com/presidential-notes-louisa-catherine-adams (accessed January 3, 2012): “reading and writing and spice through story telling”; Louisa Catherine Adams: Our White House: Looking In, Looking Out; http://www.ourwhitehouse.org/flpages/ladams.html (accessed January 3, 2012): lists Louisa’s musical talents.

  42. Presidential Notes: “Louisa Catherine Adams.”

  43. Adams, Adventures of a Nobody. The “old gentleman” is her father-in-law, former president John Adams.

  44. Challinor: “At times wished obsessively and overwhelmingly to die”; Hart, 23: The Adams only daughter who was not stillborn was Louisa Catherine, who died September 15, 1812, in Saint Petersburg, Russia.

  45. O’Brien.

  46. Ibid., 228.

  47. Nagel, Descent from Glory, 116–7.

  48. Jack Shepherd, Cannibals of the Heart: A Personal Biography of Louisa Catherine and John Quincy Adams (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1980), 99.

  49. Puerperal Fever; Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puerperal_fever#Famous_Victims, (accessed January 23, 2012).

  50. Challinor; Shepherd, 190.

  51. Challinor.

  52. Adams, Adventures of a Nobody: “My husband’s time was entirely occupied”; Shepherd, 103, and Challinor describe the traumatic birth of George Washington Adams; Shepherd, 111, alludes to John Quincy’s absences.

  53. Challinor, use of “illness” as a bargaining device; Don Keko, Louisa Adams: The Reclusive First Lady, http://www.examibner.com/american-history-innational/louisa-adams-thr-reclusive-firstlady (accessed January 3, 2012): frequent migraines and fainting spells.

  54. Challinor for her use of laudanum both in Massachusetts and in Saint Petersburg.

  55. Nagel, Descent from Glory, 83.

  56. Laudanum: Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laudanum (accessed March 8, 2012); Laudanum encyclopedia topics: http://www.reference.com/browse/laudanum (accessed March 8, 2012); “What is Laudanum”: http://www.laudanumonline.com.drupal/content/what-laudanum (accessed March 8, 2012, for Mary Todd Lincoln and laudanum, see below.

  57. Challinor and Shepherd, 329, for the long term recurrences of erysipelas; Nagel, John Quincy Adams: A Public Life, a Private Life, 290, and Nagel, The Adams Women, 212–3, for Louisa’s symptoms and her attempted respite at the Bedford spa; Erysipelas: Pubmed Health National Library of Medicine, http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/publicmedhealth/PMH0001643/ (accessed January 19, 2012).

  58. Shepherd, 220, 221, 223.

  59. Ibid., 223, 226–8. 239.

  60. Nagel, Adams Women, 287–8.

  61. Presidential Notes: “Louisa Catherine Adams”: “Louisa’s Room became a central area”; Keko, First Ladies’ History, “Louisa Adams: The Chocoholic Resurfaces,” http://firstladyblog.typepad.com/my-year-with-the-firstla/2011/04/first (accessed January 3, 2012): “The Adams residence became a social center”; Catherine Allgor, Parlor Politics, in Which the Ladies of Washington Help Build a City and a Government (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2000), 165, for Louisa’s political skills.

  62. Allgor, 191, 193, for being sidelined in the White House; Presidential Notes: “Louisa Catherine Adams,” http://www.essortment.com/presidential-notes-louisa-catherine-adams (accessed January 3, 2012): description of Louisa’s social skills as wife of the secretary of state.

  63. Louisa Catherine Johnson Adams: Our White House: Looking In, Looking Out, http://www.ourwhitehouse.org/flpages/ladams.html (accessed January 3, 2012).

  64. Nagel, Adams Women, 189, and Challinor record for John Quincy’s recommendation of the Rush book; Louisa Catherine Adams, Diary and Biographical Writings of Louisa Catherine Adams, Judith Graham, et al., ed. (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 2012), 1812–1814 Diary, 373, records Louisa’s reaction.

  65. Nagel:, Adams Women, 212–13, for the unnamed physician’s diagnosis; Hysteria, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Female_hysteria (accessed November 5, 2013) for a discussion of hysteria.

  66. Shepherd, 256.

  67. Nagel, Adams Women, 217: opinions on the status of women, and 236: advising niece against marriage; Keko; http://www.examibner.com/american-history-innational/louisa-adams-thr-reclusive-firstlady (January 3, 2012): chocolate addiction.

  68. Shepherd, 260–4; Nagel: Adams Women, 220.

  69. Nagel, Adams Women, 219–20; Shepherd, 256–60.

  70. Nagel, Adams Women, 214–5: 1828 recurrence of erysipelas; Shepherd, 307–8, for Huntt’s White House treatments; Ludwig M. Deppisch, The White House Physician: A History from Washington to George W. Bush (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2007), 20–31, for Dr. Huntt’s biographical information.

  71. Nagel, Adams Women, 220–1.

  72. Shepherd, 359–60; Hunt, Harriot Kezla (1805–1875), http://www.jiffynotes.com/a_study_guides/book_notes_add/amer_000 (accessed January 16, 2012).

  73. Shepherd, 405, 409–10.

  74. Elizabeth Keckley, Behind the Scenes (Los Angeles: Indo-European, 2011), 53.

  75. Catherine Clinton, Mrs. Lincoln: A Life (New York: HarperCollins, 2009): 84, 221; Anne E. Beidler, The Affliction of Mary Todd Lincoln (Seattle: Coffeetown, 2009): 12–13, 32–5: Mary Lincoln’s lifelong headaches; Clinton, 244: Fear of headache subservient to desire to accompany her husband to Ford’s theater.

  76. Jason Emerson, The Madness of Mary Lincoln (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2007); W.A. Evans, Mrs. Abraham Lincoln: A Study of Her Personality and Her Influence on Lincoln (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2010); Mark E. Neely, Jr., and R. Gerald McMurtry: The Insanity File: The Case of Mary Todd Lincoln (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1986).

  77. Evans, 65, 138; Clinton, 88–9.

  78. Clinton, 86–7; Emerson, 12; Jerrold Packard, The Lincolns in the White House: Four Years That Shattered a Family (New York: St. Martin’s Griffin, 2005), 19.

  79. Evans, 155: “She kept Mr. Lincoln from making several mistakes”; Carl Sandburg, Abraham Linc
oln: The Prairie Years and the War Years (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1954), 155: Mary provided excellent political counsel; David Herbert Donald, Lincoln (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1995),158, summarized Mrs. Lincoln’s unpredictable behavior.

  80. Packard, 1.

  81. Clinton, 127: describes her social and ceremonial activities; Packard, 71, and Robert P. Watson, The Presidents’ Wives: Reassessing the Office of the First Lady (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 2000), 77: Prince Bonaparte’s reception; Donald, 311, for more on her social success; Evans, 165–6, and Watson, 95–6: Mrs. Lincoln as political partner.

  82. Watson, 36: “brutalized by her husband’s critics”; Evans, 178, for Mrs. Lincoln’s reaction.

  83. Keckley, 45, for Mary’s judgment on Seward; Sandburg, 393; Evans, 172; Donald, 427–8.

  84. Donald, 271; Evans, 169–70, for New York City shopping spree; Keckley, 29.

  85. Clinton, 219, Evans, 169–70, and Keckley, 53: Mrs. Lincoln’s continued extravagance; Packard, 210: purchases from Galt Brothers.

  86. Emerson, 13; Clinton, 169–70.

  87. Clinton, 165–7; Keckley 34–5; Packard, 119.

  88. Clinton, 165–7, 169–70; Packard, 114–6, for typhoid fever diagnosis.

  89. Clinton, 212.

  90. Evans, 185–6.

  91. Emerson, 17.

  92. Clinton, 182–89; Donald, 427; Emerson, 36–7; Sandburg, 394. For more on spiritualism, the reader is referred to the following: “The Fox Sisters: Spiritualism’s Unlikely Founders,” http://www.histroynet.com/the-fox-sisters-spiritualisms-unlikely-founders.htm. Maggie and Katy Fox were charlatans but had a remarkable career for decades as they duped countless people into communication with their beloved deceased; “Charles J. Colchester,” http://www.mrlincolnswhitehouse.org/content_inside.asp?ID=179&sub.htm. Colchester was a medium who was a fake. He conducted séances for Mrs. Lincoln, including one at the Soldier’s Home. Journalist Noah Brooks, a friend of the First Lady, exposed Colchester and destroyed Colchester’s attempt to blackmail Mrs. Lincoln; Nettie Colburn Maynard, Séances in Washington: Abraham Lincoln and Spiritualism During the Civil War (Toronto: Ancient Wisdom, 2011) (originally published as Was Abraham Lincoln a Spiritualist? in 1891). Nettie Colburn described séances with Abraham Lincoln and Mary Lincoln in the White House from 1863 to 1865. William Mumler: Louis Kaplan, The Strange Case of William Mumler, Spirit Photographer (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2008). Mumler was also a fake. He produced a photograph of Abraham Lincoln superimposed upon a photo of Mary Lincoln.

  93. Donald, 427; Beidler, 20.

  94. Donald, 572–3; Beidler, 23–4; Packard, 229–30; Keckley, 59–60.

  95. Emerson, 16.

  96. Emerson, 16; Packard, 162.

  97. Emerson, 16; Packard, 162; Clinton, 221: Robert Lincoln’s conclusion.

  98. Packard, 162; Clinton, 121; 255 for Mary Lincoln’s state after the funeral events were over.

  99. Jonathan R.T. Davidson, Kathryn M. Connor and Marvin Swartz: “Mental Illness in U.S. Presidents Between 1776 and 1974: A Review of Biographical Sources,” Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease 194, no. 1 (January 2006), 47–51.

  100. Robert P. Watson, The Presidents’ Wives, 143.

  101. Ibid., 195; John B. Roberts, II, Rating the First Ladies (New York: Citadel, 2003), xxiv.

  102. The reader is directed to the following excellent references: W.A. Evans, Mrs. Abraham Lincoln: A Study of Her Personality and Her Influence on Lincoln; Mark E. Neely, Jr., and R. Gerald McMurtry, The Insanity File; Jason Emerson, The Madness of Mary Lincoln; Clinton, Mrs. Lincoln.

  103. Neely and McMurtry, The Insanity File.

  104. Evans, 217: account of money; Emerson, 114: her accusation against Robert Lincoln.

  105. Emerson, 40, and Evans, 215: “An Indian spirit was removing her scalp”; Evans, 222–3, lists her delusions; Evans, 222–3, and Emerson, 67–70, for discussions of suicide with Keckley; Emerson, 185–90: 1875 suicide attempt.

  106. Emerson, 185–190.

  107. Evans, 318: as early as 1860; Clinton, 221: began with carriage accident; Emerson, 16: signs of mental illness preceded Lincoln’s assassination; Evans, 186, 305:illness a result of Willie’s and Abraham’s deaths.

  108. Roberts, 114.

  Chapter 6

  1. Ishbel Ross, The General’s Wife: The Life of Mrs. Ulysses S. Grant (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1959), 220–1.

  2. Russell L. Mahan, Lucy Webb Hayes: A First Lady by Example (New York: Nova Science, 2011), 72.

  3. Ross, 8.

  4. Emily Geer, First Lady: The Life of Lucy Webb Hayes (Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 1984), 8, 10, 16; Mahan, 17. Wesleyan Female College was founded in Cincinnati in 1812 but was established as a woman’s college only in 1846. At the time of Lucy’s matriculation, the school had an enrollment of 340 women. She graduated after three years in 1859 with a well-rounded education that probably included rhetoric, mathematics, geology, painting, French, German and English. The college’s notable contribution was the introduction of the terms alumna and alumnae. Lack of funds forced the school’s closure in 1892.

  5. Ross, 198.

  6. Geer, 93. Rutherford Hayes was governor of Ohio, 1868–1872 and 1876–1877.

  7. Julia Grant; National First Ladies’ Library, http://www.firstladies.org/biographies/firstladies.aspx?biography=19 (accessed 19 February 2013).

  8. Jean Edward Smith, Grant (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2001), 473.

  9. Julia Grant, National First Ladies’ Library.

  10. Ross, 207–9.

  11. Geer, 138; Mahan, 8.

  12. 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), 227; Geer, 233.

  13. Geer, 144: “Washington reporters began to praise Lucy’s competence as a hostess and appreciate her”; 188: On June 19, 1878, in the Blue Room of the White House, Emily Platt, Lucy Hayes’ niece, companion and efficient secretary married General Russell Hayes, a military colleague of the president.

  14. Lucy Hayes, National First Ladies’ Library, http://www.firstladies.org/biographies/firstladies.aspx?biography=20 (accessed 19 February 2013).

  15. Julia Grant, National First Ladies’ Library.

  16. Ross, 37: “troubled her considerably”; 329; refusal to wear glasses.

  17. Ibid., 37.

  18. Ibid., 221–2. Ulysses Grant stopped his wife from surgery at the last minute, saying, “My dear, I know that I am very selfish and ought not to say what I am going to; but I don’t want to have your eyes fooled with. They are all right as they are. They look just as they looked the first time I ever saw them—the same eyes I looked into when I fell in love with you.”

  19. Surgical Management of Strabismus, Chapter 1, “History of Strabismus Surgery, http://www.cybersight.org/bins/volume_oage.asp?cid=1–2161–2252 (20 February 2013). In 1839 Dieffenbach performed the first successful surgery to correct strabismus. He removed part of the medial rectus extraocular muscle to correct an internal squint. It took some years before modern anesthetic and surgical techniques permitted such surgery to become routine in America.

  20. Ross, 234.

  21. Mahan, 2–3.

  22. Geer, 36–7.

  23. Ibid., 106–7.

  24. Mahan, 29.

  25. Geer, 109.

  26. Mahan, 1: “on election day”; 72: “the only drawback.”

  27. Ibid., 103; Lucy Hayes, National First Ladies’ Library.

  28. Geer, 109, 210.

  29. Mahan, 72: “She is large but not unwieldy.”

  30. Ibid., 101.

  31. Geer, 255.

  32. Ibid., 36–7: instances of arthritic attacks; Mahan, 29–30: “For ten days has had her rheumatism creeping over her from one place to another, giving her great pain. It began in her left shoulder and arm and in her neck.”

  33. Deppisch, The White House Physician, 46–7.

  Chapter 7

  1. Mary Lord
Dimmick diary entry, May 20, 1892: Benjamin Harrison Home, “The medical conclusion of Dr. Franklin Gardiner.”

  2. Please refer to Chapter One (yellow fever) and Chapter Two (malaria) of this book; J. Arthur Myers, Tuberculosis: A Half Century of Study and Conquest (St. Louis: Warren H. Green, 1970), 305; David L. Ellison, Healing Tuberculosis in the Woods: Medicine and Science at the End of the Nineteenth Century (Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1994), 11.

  3. Robert P. Watson, First Ladies of the United States: A Biographical Dictionary (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 2001), 56.

  4. http://ask.yahoo.com/20020417.html (accessed 26 January 2012. “Consumption” is an old name for tuberculosis (TB) that describes how the illness wastes away, or consumes, its victims. TB is “an ancient enemy” that has plagued humankind for more than five thousand years. The Greeks called it phthisis, and Hippocrates advised his medical students against treating it because it was almost always deadly, and a dead patient was bad for business; Indianapolis News, October 24 and 25, 1892.

  5. Harry J. Sievers, S.J.: Benjamin Harrison: Hoosier Warrior (Chicago: Henry Regnery, 1952): 72–3, 75, 78.

  6. Ibid.; Sievers, 194, 224–6, 237, 292.

  7. Sievers, Benjamin Harrison: Hoosier Warrior, 207; Charles W. Calhoun, Benjamin Harrison (New York: Henry Holt, 2005): 143; Dimmick diary entry, January 24, 1891: “Mrs. Harrison’s reception, but she was too ill to receive”; Dimmick letter to Mrs. Putzi, September 23, 1891: Mrs. Harrison has been “ill for the past few days”; Indianapolis News, October 24 and 25, 1892; Mary Lord Dimmick diary entry, December 29, 1891.

  8. Library of Congress, Benjamin Harrison archives: presence at February 16 dinner; Anne Chieko Moore, Caroline Lavinia Scott Harrison (New York: Nova History, 2005), 51–2: presence at April 6, 1892, dinner, “catarrhal pneumonia,” pallor and cough at April 6 dinner.

  9. Dimmick diary entry, April 7, 1892, records the onset of her continuous nursing of her aunt; diary entry, April 23, 1892: “suffers much from depression.” The diagnosis of malaria was a diagnostic construct by the uninformed Dimmick. Caroline Harrison never had malaria; diary entry, May 14, 1892: “still very depressed and nervous”; diary entry, May 21, 1892: “very nervous and ill all day”; Mary Lord Dimmick letter to May Saunders Harrison, July 28, 1892: “state of melancholia.”