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

by Deppisch, Ludwig M. , M. D.

  10. New York Tribune, October 25, 1892; Medical and Surgical Register of the United States and Canada, 1898.

  11. Dimmick diary entries, May 14 and 19, 1892; Dimmick diary, May 20, 1892: Dr. Doughy’s erroneous diagnosis.

  12. Dimmick diary, several entries, May 22–29, 1892; Calhoun, 143: for initial experience at Loon Lake.

  13. New York Tribune, October 25, 1892, and Moore, 51, for the diagnosis and treatment of Mrs. Harrison’s pleurisy; New York Tribune, October 25, 1892, and Dimmick diary, September 14 or 15, 1892, for Edmund Trudeau; Moore, 52, for press release.

  14. Harry J. Sievers, S.J., Benjamin Harrison: Hoosier President (Newtown, CT: American Political Biography, 1996), 242.

  15. New York Tribune, October 25, 1892; Dimmick diaries, several entries.

  16. Ellison, Healing Tuberculosis in the Woods, 1; William G. Rothstein, American Physicians in the 19th Century: From Sects to Science (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1985), 267–272.

  17. Robert Taylor, Saranac: America’s Magic Mountain (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1986), 75; Thomas M. Daniel, Captain of Death: The Story of Tuberculosis (Rochester: University of Rochester Press, 1997), 108–9; Thomas Dormandy, The White Death: A History of Tuberculosis (London: Hambledon, 1999), 177–182.

  18. Edward Livingston Trudeau, An Autobiography (New York: Lea and Febiger, 1915), 243.

  19. Benjamin Harrison (Indianapolis) to Dr. E.L. Trudeau (Saranac Lake, New York), March 22, 1899 (Library of Congress Benjamin Harrison Collection).

  20. Deppisch, The White House Physician, 54, 60.

  21. Obituary of Dr. Franklin A. Gardner, New York Times, February 13, 1903; Mrs. Franklin Gardner, notes to Benjamin Harrison, March 18, 1892, April 1, 1892.

  22. W.H. Crook, Memories of the White House: The Home Life of Our Presidents from Lincoln to Roosevelt, Being Personal Recollections of Colonel W.H. Crook (Boston: Little, Brown, 1911), 229–30; Carl Sferrazza Anthony, America’s First Families: An Inside View of 200 Years of Private Life in the White House (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2000), 211; Franklin A. Gardner, letters to Benjamin Harrison, September 5, 1898, January 15, 1899, and January 22, 1899; Benjamin Harrison, letters to F.E. Doughty, November 10, 1897, and June 3, 1898; Degregorio, 332, 334.

  23. The allopathic-homeopathic conflict will be discussed at length in a later chapter; New York Tribune, October 25, 1892; Medical Mirror 3 (1892), 471–2, 514.

  24. John Scott, letter to Henry Scott, May 3, 1858. John Scott was Caroline Harrison’s father and Henry was her brother (courtesy of President Benjamin Harrison Home, Indianapolis); Moore, 11; Robert P. Watson, First Ladies of the United States: A Biographical Dictionary (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 2001), 153.

  25. Moore, 21–2: In January 1883, “she began a three month convalescence at a New York hospital following surgery”; Sievers, Benjamin Harrison: Hoosier Statesman, 227–9: Health “sunk to a new low in January, 1883 and she stayed under doctor’s care in New York until the middle of March. Surgery kept her hospitalized”; Valerie J. Riley and John Spurlock: “Vesicovaginal Fistula,” http://emedicine.medscape.com/article/267943-overview (July 28, 2009).

  26. L. Lewis Wall and Thomas Addis Emmet, “The Vesicovaginal Fistula and the Origins of Reconstructive Gynecologic Surgery,” International Urogynecology Journal 13 (2002), 145–155.

  27. Wall; Three years before Emmet operated on Caroline Harrison, in 1880, the second edition of his book, The Principles and Practice of Gynecology, was published. On page 90, he wrote the following: “Sloughing from continued pressure of the child’s head on the vaginal walls during labor, resulting in fistulae, or loss of tissue with subsequent contraction, will often displace the uterus, interfere with the circulation, and cause much irritation to the bladder and rectum. The same cause and injury to the uterus often result in atrophy to the organ and permanent cessation of menstruation, even in early womanhood.” Earlier, in 1868, Emmet had elucidated this condition in book-length form (Parturition and Other Causes with Cases of Recto-Vaginal Fistula (New York: William Wood).

  28. Benjamin Harrison (U.S. Senate), letter to Dr. Thomas A. Emmet (New York), June 13, 1883.

  29. Watson, The Presidents’ Wives, 53.

  30. Moore, 39–44.

  31. Ibid., 34–8, 83.

  32. Ibid., 34–8, for a discussion of her refurbishing efforts; Calhoun, 78: “During her years in the White House”; Craig Schermer letter to the author, September 6, 2008, and Jennifer Capps letter to the author, March 30, 2012, describe her use of solvents.

  33. Degregorio, 334–7.

  34. Sievers, Benjamin Harrison: Hoosier President, 227–21, 236.

  35. Degregorio, 346; Sievers: Hoosier President, 241; Calhoun, 143, 149; Paul F. Boller, Jr.: Presidential Campaigns (New York: Oxford University Press, 1985), 162.

  36. Sievers, Benjamin Harrison: Hoosier President, 248–250; Boller, 165. Charles Calhoun holds a contrary opinion that Caroline’s illness and death contributed to Harrison’s defeat. The president was unable to leave her side to engage in the sort of effective campaign speaking that had sealed his victory in 1888; personal correspondence with the author; Homer E. Socolofsky and Allan B. Spetter, The Presidency of Benjamin Harrison (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1987), 199; Sievers, Benjamin Harrison: Hoosier President, 238–9, 248–9; Boller, 165; Calhoun, 145–6. The steelworkers’ strike at Carnegie Steel’s Homestead, Pennsylvania, plant in June and July 1892 was one of the most violent labor battles in U.S. history. Twelve people were killed and sixty wounded. Andrew Carnegie, the owner, was widely viewed as being close to President Harrison.

  37. Watson, The Presidents’ Wives, 139–143.

  38. See Chapter Five.

  39. Jean Choate, Eliza Johnson in Perspective (New York: Nova History, 2006), 36, 47. A cough is mentioned in Choate, 50–51, 58, 63, 66–7, 69, 79–80.

  40. Ibid., 101; Eliza Johnson, National First Ladies’ Library, http://www.firstladies.org/biographies/firstladies.aspx?biography=18 (accessed 27 March 2012); Choate, 154.

  41. Barron Lerner, “Charting the Death of Eleanor Roosevelt,” http://www.fathom.com/feature/35672/index.html (20 March 2012); B.H. Lerner, “Revisiting the Death of Eleanor Roosevelt: Was the Diagnosis of Tuberculosis Missed?” International Journal of Tuberculosis and Lung Disease 5, no. 12 (December 2001): 1080–5.

  Chapter 8

  1. Nancy L. Herron, Ida Saxton McKinley: Indomitable Spirit or Autocrat of the Sickbed in Inventing a Voice; The Rhetoric of American First Ladies of the Twentieth Century, ed. Molly Meijer Wertheimer, (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2004), 31.

  2. William C. Braisted and William H. Bell, The Life Story of Presley Marion Rixey (Strasburg, VA: Shenandoah, 1930), 30.

  3. Ibid., 30–31.

  4. Ross T. McIntire, White House Physician (New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1946), 58–9: McIntire, Franklin Roosevelt’s personal and White House physician, wrote: “Dr. Jonathan M. Foltz, the first regular White House physician, was a family friend of James Buchanan and had his own room in the White House. Colonel Robert M. O’Reilly came to Grover Cleveland’s attention through their common love of fishing.”

  5. Braisted and Bell, 240–1.

  6. Presley Marion Rixey, “Guarding the Health of Our Presidents,” Better Health, June 1925.

  7. Braisted and Bell, 239.

  8. Margaret Leech, In the Days of McKinley (New York: Harper, 1959), 567.

  9. Leech, 17; John C. DeToledo, Bruno B. Toledo and Meredith Lowe: “The Epilepsy of First Lady Ida Saxton McKinley,” Southern Medical Journal 93, no. 3 (March 2000), 267–271.

  10. DeToledo; Leech, 17; Herron, 32.

  11. Craig Hart, A Genealogy of the Wives of American Presidents and Their First Two Generations of Descent (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2004), 158.

  12. Leech, 17; DeToledo offered the description of Mrs. McKinley’s attacks.

  13. Absence seizure (petit mal seizure): Mayo Clinic, http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/petit-mal-seizure/DS00216
/DSEC (accessed April 5, 2012).

  14. Leech, 17: “big,” “prolonged and violent”; Rixey: “other ailments”; DeToledo.

  15. DeToledo; Steven J. Kittner, et al., “Pregnancy and the Risk of Stroke,” New England Journal of Medicine 335 (September 12, 1996), 768–774; C.A. Davis and P. O’Brien, “Stroke and Pregnancy,” Journal of Neurology Neurosurgery and Psychiatry 79 (2008), 240–245; James N. Martin, Jr., Brad D. Thigpen, et al.: “Stroke and Severe Preeclampsia and Eclampsia: A Paradigm Shift Focusing on Systolic Blood Pressure,” Obstetrics and Gynecology 105, no. 2 (February 2005), 246–253.

  16. Leech, 19–20; Ida McKinley, National First Ladies’ Library, http:www.firstladies.org/biographies/firstladies.aspx?biography=25 (accessed June 25, 2010).

  17. Herron, 35; William Degregorio, The Complete Book of U.S. Presidents (New York: Wings, 1993), 358–9, provided the dates of McKinley’s political career.

  18. “Locock, Sir Charles, Obituary,” British Medical Journal, July 31, 1875, 151; “Potassium bromide,” Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potassium_bromide (accessed July 1, 2010).

  19. Herron, 35.

  20. “Potassium bromide,” Wikipedia; Walter J. Friedlander, “The Rise and Fall of Bromide Therapy in Epilepsy,” Archives of Neurology 57 (December 2000), 1782–5.

  21. “Mrs. McKinley’s Life and Character,” Los Angeles Times, June 14, 1901.

  22. Leech, 199, 432, for McKinley’s euphemisms; Braisted and Bell; Presley Marion Rixey, “Guarding the Health of Our Presidents,” Better Health (June 1925).

  23. Braisted and Bell, 35, 43, and Leech, 123, 433, 434, with the euphemisms; Leech, 432, 433: Kate’s reaction.

  24. “Epilepsy Across the Spectrum: Promoting Health and Understanding,” Consensus Report, Institute of Medicine, March 30, 2012.

  25. Ibid., 274; “The History and Stigma of Epilepsy,” Introduction, Epilepsia 44, no. suppl. 6 (2003): 12–14; Ann Jacoby and Joan K. Austin, “Social Stigma for Adults and Children with Epilepsy,” Epilepsia 48, no. suppl. S9 (December 2007), 6–9.

  26. Rixey, Guarding the Health of Our Presidents.

  27. Leech, 27–8: seeing Dr. Bishop in New York; Joseph N. Bishop, 1898 Medical and Surgical Register of the United States and Canada (Detroit: R.L. Polk, 1898), 1150; Jay Henry Mowbray, ed., Representative Men of New York, vol. 1, “Joseph Norton Bishop” (New York: New York Press, 1898), 50–53.

  28. Leech, 27.

  29. Braisted and Bell, 35–7.

  30. Leech, 99, 577–9.

  31. Rixey.

  32. Ibid.; Leech, 577–8.

  33. Associated Press (to Los Angeles Times): “Official Announcements: Bulletins from the Bedside,” May 17, 1901. Braisted and Bell, 43–47, 241–3, provides background from Rixey’s point of view. Rixey’s “Guarding the Health of Our Presidents” attributed Ida McKinley’s recovery to the prevailing of “heroic efforts.”

  34. Rixey.

  35. New York Times: “Mrs. McKinley’s Condition Is Reportedly Grave,” June 5, 1901.

  36. Leech, 577–9, 583; Braisted and Bell, 47; “Off for Canton Home,” Washington Post, July 6, 1901.

  37. Henry Jr. Gibbons, Obituary, Journal of the American Medical Association 57, no. 16 (October 14, 1911), 1300; Clinton Cushing, Obituary: Journal of the American Medical Association 42(21), 1369, May 21, 1904; William Fitch Cheney, “Reminiscences of Three Eminent San Francisco Physicians,” California State Journal of Medicine, no. 8 (August 21, 1923): 325–7.

  38. Joseph Oakland Hirschfelder, Directory of Deceased Physicians, vol. 1 (Chicago: AMA, 1993), 719.

  39. Molly Caldwell Crosby, The American Plague: The Untold Story of Yellow Fever, the Epidemic That Shaped Our History (New York: Berkley, 2006), 98, 126–7, 129–30, 136–7, 154, 229; Howard A. Kelly and Walter L. Burrage, American Medical Biographies (Baltimore: Norman, Remington, 1920), for William Johnson.

  40. Braisted and Bell, 244–5.

  41. Ibid., 245.

  42. “No Hope for Mrs. McKinley,” New York Times, May 25, 1907; “Mrs. McKinley Dies in Canton Cottage,” New York Times, May 27, 1907.

  43. Rixey.

  44. Ida McKinley, Biography, National First Ladies’ Library, http:www.firstladies.org/biographies/firstladies.aspx?biography=25 (accessed June 25, 2010).

  45. DeToledo.

  46. Leech, 22.

  47. DeToledo.

  48. Quote is from Herron, 36; Ida McKinley, National First Ladies’ Library.

  49. Chapter Five.

  50. John R. Gates, “NonEpileptic Seizures: Classification Coexistence with Epilepsy: Diagnosis, Therapeutic Approaches and Consensus,” Epilepsy and Behavior 3 (2002), 28–33; Vernon M. Neppe, “Pseudoseizures or Somatoform Spells; Hysteroepilepsy or Somatoform Spell Disorder,” Pacific Neuropsychiatric Institutes, http://www.pni.org/neuropsychiatry/seizures/epilepsy/pseudo_seizure.html (accessed May 2, 2012).

  51. Alan Levenson, personal communication to author, April 18, 2012.

  52. Jonathan Davidson, personal communication to author, April 18, 2012.

  53. Herron, 36; Ida McKinley, National First Ladies’ Library; Leech, 436.

  54. Leech, 27–8, 32.

  55. Ibid., 120, 129; Herron, 37.

  56. Ida McKinley, National First Ladies’ Library; Leech, 28.

  57. Ida McKinley, National First Ladies’ Library; DeToledo.

  58. Watson, The Presidents’ Wives, 195: rated her as 32 of 36 first ladies; Roberts, Rating the First Ladies listed her as 32 of 38, xxiv.

  59. Watson, 140–3.

  60. DeToledo; Herron, 35.

  61. Leech, 19.

  62. Ida McKinley, National First Ladies’ Library.

  Chapter 9

  1. Lewis L. Gould, Helen Taft: Our Musical First Lady (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2010), 154.

  2. Carl Sferrazza Anthony, Nellie Taft: The Unconventional First Lady of the Ragtime Era (New York: Harper, 2005), 25.

  3. Ibid., 32.

  4. Ibid., 39.

  5. Ibid., 47–8, 54–5; Taft, Helen, National First Ladies’ Museum, http://www.firstladies.org/biographies/firstladies.aspx?biography=27 (accessed 20 November 2013).

  6. Gould, Helen Taft, 8.

  7. Anthony, 92, 103, 123; William Degregorio, The Complete Book of U.S. Presidents (New York: Wings, 1993), 394–5.

  8. Anthony; Judith Icke Anderson, William Howard Taft: An Intimate History (New York: W.W. Norton, 1981); Gould, Helen Taft; Lewis L. Gould, ed., My Dearest Nellie: The Letters of William Howard Taft to Helen Herron Taft, 1909–1912 (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2011); Helen Herron Taft, Recollections of Full Years (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1914).

  9. Anthony, 33, 36, 38, 40, 42.

  10. Ibid., 10: “It was simply that if I was not busy”; 175: hints of poor health and ennui; 360: her memoir.

  11. Anthony, 164, quotes a letter excerpt from Nellie Taft to her husband, written February 1, 1902: “despite her own physical ailments resulting from malaria”; Gould, 19: “fragile looking woman.”

  12. Chapter Two.

  13. Degregorio, 397.

  14. Gould, 19.

  15. Anthony, 213.

  16. Anderson, 154.

  17. Anderson, 153, for compliments; Anthony, 228.

  18. Anthony, 86–7, 160, regarding Helen’s mother; 164, 304, regarding Helen’s father.

  19. Paula Jerrard-Dunne, Geoffrey Cloud, Ahmad Hassan and Hugh S. Markus: “Evaluating the Genetic Component of Ischemic Stroke Subtypes: A Family History Study,” Stroke 34 (2003): 1364–1369.

  20. Jose Antonio Egido, Olga Castillo, et al., “Is Psycho-Physical Stress a Risk Factor for Stroke? A Case-Control Study,” Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery, Psychiatry (10 September 2012): 1136.

  21. Anthony, 39, 219, 407; Gould, 18.

  22. Edelson, ed.: “Stroke Risk in Women Smokers Goes Up by Each Cigarette,” http://health.usnews.com/health-news/family-health/heart/article/2008/08/14/stroke-risk-in-women-smokers (8 September 2012); Philip A. Wolf, Ralph B. D’Agostino, et al
., “Cigarette Smoking as a Risk Factor for Stroke,” Journal of the American Medical Association 259, no. 7 (1988): 1025–1029; Graham A. Colditz, Ruth Bonita, et al., “Cigarette Smoking and Risk of Stroke in Middle-Aged Women,” New England Journal of Medicine 318 (April 14, 1988): 937–941.

  23. Anthony, 258–260, 262.

  24. William Taft to Robert Taft, May 18, 1909, “Physicians in William Howard Taft’s Life,” http:///www.apneos.com/physicians.html (accessed September 8, 2012).

  25. “Mrs. Taft’s Illness Due to Social Causes,” New York Times, May 19, 1909; Gould, 50–51; Anthony, 261.

  26. “Mrs. Taft Can’t Meet Guests,” New York Times, May 22, 1909; “Mrs. Taft Still Ill; Not At Garden Party,” New York Times, May 29, 1909.

  27. Anthony, 267; Gould, 53.

  28. Anthony, 263; Gould, 53.

  29. A. McGehee Harvey, Gert H. Brieger, Susan L. Abrams and Victor A. McKusick: A Model of Its Kind: A Centennial History of Medicine at Johns Hopkins, vol. 1 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989), 44; William H. Taft to Helen Herron Taft, October 31, 1909, “Physicians in William Howard Taft’s Life,” http:///www.apneos.com/physicians.html (accessed September 8, 2012).

  30. Anthony, 275–6.

  31. Gould, 63: “she made remarkable progress in the preceding two months”; Anthony, 294, 297.

  32. “Apraxia of speech,” National Institute on Deafness and Other Communicative Disorders, http://www.nidcd.nih.gov/health/voice/pages/apraxia.aspx (accessed November 23, 2013).

  33. Anthony, 304: Daughter Helen’s quote; Gould, 123–4; “Mrs. Taft Ill Here, President with Her,” New York Times, May 15, 1911.

  34. Gould, 123–4; “Mrs. Taft Will Rest,” New York Times, May 20, 1911.

  35. Gould, 133, 136: Tafts’ twenty-fifth wedding anniversary celebration; Anthony, 346: 1912 Democrat National Convention.

  36. Anderson, 167: “During Nellie’s Illness Taft Was a Somber and Stricken Man”; Anthony, 264.

  37. Anthony, 279.

  38. Gould, 51.

  39. Anderson, 162.