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

by Deppisch, Ludwig M. , M. D.

  40. Gould, 154.

  41. Anthony, 398–9.

  42. Gould, 52; Anthony, 385: quote regarding self-control of stress.

  43. Anthony, 385.

  44. Anthony, 402, 404. There are suggestions, unconfirmed and medically undocumented, that Nellie Taft had other attacks. In a letter from William Taft to his son Robert at the time of the 1909 stroke, Taft said, “You know she has had these attacks which seem to proceed from nervous exhaustion, and in which her heart functionates [sic] very feebly. It is not an organic trouble of the heart, but it seems to be some nervous affection” (Anthony, 262), and “Henry Adams learned from the widow of John Hay that Mrs. Taft’s attack in May 1909 was the ‘third time she has had something of the kind’” (Gould, 49).

  45. Anthony, 408–410; “Mrs. W.H. Taft Dies, President’s Widow,” New York Times, May 22, 1943.

  46. New York Times, May 22, 1943; “General Delaney Dies, Physician to Taft,” Wilkes-Barre (PA) Record, November 13, 1936.

  47. John C. Lungren and John C. Lungren Jr., Healing Richard Nixon (Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 2003), 162.

  48. Paul F. Boller, Presidential Wives: An Anecdotal History (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), 397; Watson, The Presidents’ Wives, 79.

  49. William Safire, “Political Spouse,” New York Times, June 24, 1993; Donnie Radcliffe, “Appreciation: Pat Nixon; Cloth Coat, Ironclad Devotion,” Washington Post, June 23, 1993.

  50. Julie Nixon Eisenhower, Pat Nixon: The Untold Story (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1986), 17–55; Mary C. Brennan, Pat Nixon. Embattled First Lady (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2011), 1–14.

  51. Eisenhower, 171; Brennan, 71.

  52. Brennan, 163: “on several occasions, she even smoked in public”; 173: her answers to reporters were false; Robert B. Semple Jr., “A Stoic Pat Nixon Is Recalled by Aide,” New York Times, August 14, 1976.

  53. Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, The Final Days (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1976), 32, 164–6, 243–4, 346.

  54. Eisenhower, 447–453.

  55. Lungren, 159; Jack Jones, “Pat Nixon’s Doctors Optimistic,” Los Angeles Times, July 9, 1976.

  56. Lungren, 162; “Therapy Expert Aids Mrs. Nixon,” Los Angeles Times, July 15, 1976; “Pat Leaves Hospital, Says She ‘Feels Fine,’” Los Angeles Times, July 23, 1976; Eisenhower, 447–453.

  57. Jon Nordheimer, “Doctors Say Mrs. Nixon Is Showing Improvement,” New York Times, July 10, 1976.

  58. “Pat Reading ‘That’ on the Day of Stroke,” Chicago Tribune, August 9, 1976.

  59. “Standing by for Mrs. Nixon,” editorial, Chicago Tribune, July 10, 1976.

  60. Lungren, 162.

  61. Brennan, 175; “Pat Nixon Suffers Stroke, Spends 5 Days in Hospital,” Los Angeles Times, August 22, 1983; “Pat Nixon Returns Home After Stroke,” Los Angeles Times, August 23, 1983.

  62. Brennan, 176; “Pat Nixon, Former First Lady, Dies at 81,” New York Times, June 23, 1993.

  Chapter 10

  1. “Mrs. Wilson Dies in the White House,” Los Angeles Times, August 7, 1914; “Mrs. Wilson Dies in White House,” New York Times, August 7, 1914.

  2. August Heckscher, Woodrow Wilson: A Biography (New York: Macmillan, 1991), 280–1.

  3. Kendrick A. Clements, Woodrow Wilson: World Statesman (Boston: Twayne, 1987), 97.

  4. Heckscher, 289–1.

  5. Eleanor Wilson McAdoo, The Woodrow Wilsons (New York: Macmillan, 1937), 229–230.

  6. Sina Dubovoy, Ellen A. Wilson: The Woman Who Made a President (New York: Nova History, 2003), 248; Roberts, Rating the First Ladies, 197: “There were five hundred guests at the ceremony.

  7. Dubovoy, 228, and Edwin A. Weinstein, Woodrow Wilson: A Medical and Psychological Biography (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1981), 254: cancellation of the inaugural ball; Heckscher, 333: Jesse’s wedding.

  8. Dubovoy, 234–5, and Clements, 97: Ellen Wilson’s cause was the Alley slums in Washington; McAdoo, 235–6: “often taking groups of Congressmen with her”; Francis Wright Saunders, Ellen Axson Wilson: First Lady Between Two Worlds (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1985), 248: illness forced her to abandon her crusade; McAdoo, 236: passage of the Alley Clearing bill.

  9. Watson, The Presidents’ Wives, 140, 143, 189.

  10. Roberts, xxiii–xxiv.

  11. Craig Hart, A Genealogy of the Wives of American Presidents and Their First Two Generations of Descent (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2004), 244.

  12. Saunders, 67; letters from cousin Mary E. Hoyt (Rome, Georgia) to Ellen A. Wilson (Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania): “very unwell” October 9, 1885; “are so sick,” November 7, 1885. Her aunt Louise sympathized: “been so sick”; Louisa Hoyt Brown (Gainesville, Georgia), letter to Ellen Axson Wilson (Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania), November 20, 1885.

  13. Dubovoy, 69.

  14. Eleanor Wilson McAdoo, The Priceless Gift: The Love Letters of Woodrow Wilson and Ellen Axson Wilson (Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1962), 148.

  15. Dubovoy, 72–4; Heckscher, 85–6.

  16. James W. Bailey, Obituary, Journal of the American Medical Association 54, no. 15 (April 9, 1910): 1229.

  17. Louisa Hoyt Brown (Gainesville, Georgia), letters to Woodrow Wilson (Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania), April 16, 17, 1886.

  18. McAdoo, The Priceless Gift, 155.

  19. Leon C. Chesley, “The Origin of the Word ‘Eclampsia,’” Obstetrics and Gynecology 39, no. 5 (May 1972): 802–4: “Toxemia: Preeclampsia and Hypertension in Pregnancy,” http://www.pregnancycrawler.com/toxemia.html (June 8, 2012; Howard Lein, personal correspondence, November 18, 2009; Bjorn Egil Vikse, Lorentz M. Irgens, et al.: “Preeclampsia and the Risk of End-Stage Renal Disease”; New England Journal of Medicine 359 (2008): 800–9: all references for eyelid edema; George Howe, letter to Ellen Axson Wilson (Gainesville, Georgia), May 2, 1886.

  20. Edwin A. Weinstein, Woodrow Wilson, 86: Travel to Georgia for her second delivery; Dubovoy, 78, and the following letters for Ellen’s distress: Mary E. Hoyt (Rome, Georgia), letters to Ellen A. Wilson (Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania), February 23, 1887, March 13, 1887: “you are suffering so”; Ellen Axson (Savannah, Georgia), letter to Ellen Axson Wilson (Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania), April 1, 1887: “were sick again”; Mary E. Hoyt (Rome, Georgia), letter to Woodrow Wilson (Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania), August 30, 1887: “I knew Ellen had been very unwell during the summer”; McAdoo: The Priceless Gift, 160: for Aunt Louise’s postpartum care.

  21. Saunders, 78; Heckscher, 93.

  22. Saunders, 78.

  23. Ibid.

  24. Ibid., 80; Weinstein, 98–9; Dubovoy, 82–4.

  25. Saunders, 80.

  26. Dubovoy, 82–4; Anne Taylor Kirschmann, A Vital Force: Women in American Homeopathy (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2004), 33, 123; Taft, Florence: Puerperal Eclampsia: Proceedings of the Annual Session of the International Hahnemannian Association (1895): 279–288.

  27. “Toxemia: Preeclampsia and Hypertension in Pregnancy,” http://www.pregnancycrawler.com/toxemia.html (June 8, 2012); Chesley, “The Origin of the Word ‘Eclampsia,’” 802–4.

  28. Saunders, 107, 115–6, 119; Dubovoy, 101; Weinstein, 150; Stockton Axson to Ellen Axson Wilson, letter November 7, 1897: “When I learned from Dr. Van Valzah that you had been at his office yesterday … I am glad to hear from the doctor that you and Brother Woodrow are both doing nicely in health.” “Mrs. Wilson Dies in White House,” New York Times, August 7, 1914: “Edward Parke Davis of Philadelphia, who had attended the Pres. and Mrs. Davis while they were residents of Philadelphia.”

  29. Weinstein, 149.

  30. Van Valzah, Directory of Deceased Physicians, 1804–1929, vol. 2 (Chicago: American Medical Association, 1993), 1582; “Van Valzah Renounces Allopathy,” New York Times, November 29, 1882; Van Valzah.

  31. Eleanor Wilson McAdoo, The Woodrow Wilsons (New York: Macmillan, 1937), 56.

  32. Saunders, 157: “Health-Wise She Never Felt Better”; Saunders, 174; Weinstein, 164.<
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  33. Saunders, 254: “mother was less animated”; Dubovoy, 211, 216: “that something was very wrong with Ellen”; Saunders, 225: “walking slowly and wearily.”

  34. Lein, personal communication; Bjorn Egil Vikse, Lorentz M. Irgens, et al.: “Preeclampsia and the Risk of End-Stage Renal Disease,” New England Journal of Medicine 359 (2008): 800–9; Weinstein, 254: Colonel House’s comment; Dubovoy, 228: cancellation of the inaugural ball.

  35. Deppisch, The White House Physician, 90–1.

  36. Cary Grayson, Woodrow Wilson: An Intimate Memoir, 2d ed. (Washington: Potomac, 1960), ix, lists this date; McAdoo: The Woodrow Wilsons, 210–211. Daughter Eleanor also claims that the Wilsons met Grayson for the first time at tea with the Tafts the day before Wilson’s inauguration. Grayson had taken care of Aunt Annie; Weinstein, 250; Grayson, 1–2; Gene Smith, When the Cheering Stopped: The Last Years of Woodrow Wilson (New York: William Morrow, 1964), 5; McAdoo, 210–11: all record the medical attention provided to Aunt Annie Howe, although the date of the event, either the day before or the day of the inauguration, is not uniformly stated; Grayson, 1, called the circumstances of his attendance upon Wilson’s aunt “providential”; Grayson, 1–2, describes his official appointment; Grayson, 1–2, and Smith, 7, describe Ellen’s involvement in Grayson’s appointment; Weinstein, 250, states that Grayson was recommended by outgoing President Taft.

  37. Dubovoy, 236: “It escaped no one’s notice … that Ellen was taxing her strength to the limit”; “Mrs. Wilson Needs Rest,” New York Times, June 21, 1913.

  38. Saunders, 262; Weinstein, 254–5.

  39. Saunders, 262: being tired with the necessity of rest breaks; Dubovoy, 249: lost weight; McAdoo, The Priceless Gift, 314: “lovely color in her cheeks disappeared.”

  40. Weinstein, 255: “a triad of symptoms typical of chronic nephritis”; Saunders, 270–1; Dubovoy, 253–4.

  41. Edward Parker Davis, The Man and the Hour (privately published, 1919), was a slim volume of poems dedicated to Woodrow Wilson; “Mrs. Wilson Dies in White House,” New York Times, August 7, 1914: “who had attended the President and Mrs. Wilson while they were residents of Princeton”; Davis to Grayson, July 22, 1913: “I think your present program is an excellent one.” Edward P. Davis to Dr. Cary T. Grayson, February 12, February 24, April 7, 1914; Medical and Surgical Register of the United States and Canada (Detroit: R.L. Polk, 1917), 1388–9, and Pascal Brooke Bland, “Edward Parker Davis,” in Jefferson Medical College Yearbook, 1937. After his Princeton graduation, Davis’s academic journey took a peculiar route: graduation from two medical schools, Rush Medical College in 1882 and Jefferson Medical College in 1888. He became chief of obstetrics and gynecology at Jefferson in 1898 and remained in that position until his retirement in 1925. Davis authored several standard textbooks, including A Treatise on Obstetrics for Students and Practitioners, and was a special representative of the United States to the 1910 meeting of the International Obstetrical and Gynecological Society in Saint Petersburg, Russia.

  42. Saunders, 270–1; Dubovoy, 254, speculated that the surgery was for a gynecological problem; Edward P. Davis (Philadelphia) to Dr. Cary T. Grayson (The White House), May 16, 1914: Davis informed Grayson that Dr. Widdowson, the anesthesiologist, had sent his bill to Mrs. Wilson, who took care of the Wilson family accounts. Davis wished Grayson to explain the reason for this bill to Mrs. Wilson. Widdowson was “an expert in anesthesia, and … he took considerable time to come to Washington to do what he did.”

  43. Saunders, 270–1: “distressingly ill”; Dubovoy, 254; Davis to Grayson letter, April 7, 1914.

  44. Saunders, 270–1; Dubovoy, 255; Weinstein, 256.

  45. Dubovoy, 255; McAdoo: The Priceless Gift, 315.

  46. Weinstein, 253–4.

  47. Harvey, A. McGehee, “Medical Students on the March: Brown, MacCallum and Opie,” Johns Hopkins Medical Journal 134 (June 1974), 330–4.

  48. Saunders, 273–6.

  49. “Mrs. Wilson Dies in the White House,” Los Angeles Times, August 7, 1914; “Mrs. Wilson Dies in White House,” New York Times, August 7, 1914; Kristie Miller, Ellen and Edith: Woodrow Wilson’s First Ladies (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2010), 89–90; Dubovoy, 258; Certificate of Death, District of Columbia, for Ellen Axson Wilson, August 6, 1914, reproduction issued August 8, 1969, and certified by John H. Crandall, chief of Vital Records Division.

  50. McAdoo, The Priceless Gift, 315; Ray Stannard Baker, interviews with Cary T. Grayson, February 18–19, 1926, RSB Collection; Weinstein, 99, 254–5; Albert S. Lyons and R. Joseph Petrucelli II, Medicine: An Illustrated History (New York: Harry C. Abrams, 1987), 516: Bright’s disease is named after the Edinburgh and Guy’s Hospital 19th-century physician Richard Bright, who studied diseases of the kidney and may have been the first recognized nephrologist.

  51. Dubovoy, 257; Woodrow Wilson to J.R. Wilson, August 6, 1914.

  52. Dubovoy, 258.

  53. Grayson, 232–5.

  54. Weinstein, 256; Saunders, 273–6: “now in its late stages, yet could not bring himself to tell the president that her condition was helpless.”

  55. Cary Grayson letter to Col. House, August 20, 1914 (House papers).

  56. Woodrow Wilson to Mary Allen Hulbert, June 21, 1914: “but that fear, thank God, is past and she is coming along slowly, but surely”; Woodrow Wilson to Alfred P. Wilson, July 23, 1914: “Ellen is making good progress, though painfully slow”; Woodrow Wilson to E.P. Davis, July 26, 1914: “at present to be making little progress, and yet it still seems certain that there is nothing wrong with her.”

  57. New York Times, August 7, 1914,

  58. Weinstein, 258–9; Sigmund Freud and William C. Bullitt, Thomas Woodrow Wilson: A Psychological Study (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1966), 156.

  59. Freud, 155; Weinstein, 258–9: Wilson’s depression.

  60. Grayson, 35–6; Miller, Ellen and Edith (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2010), 97: confession to Colonel House.

  61. Edmund: Morris, Colonel Roosevelt (New York: Random House, 2010), 384, 398.

  62. Grayson, 48; Freud and Bullitt, 214: “a nervous collapse.”

  63. Miller, 99, 108; Grayson, 50–1.

  64. Edith Bolling Wilson, My Memoir (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1938, 1939), 127.

  65. Miller, Ellen and Edith, 129–130: Wilson’s marriage to Edith; 108–110: whirlwind courtship; 11,34, 97: dependency and need for women; Freud and Bullitt, 157–8.

  66. Miller, 118: Even when engaged, Wilson passed along to Edith all sorts of confidential information and papers; Miller, 128: reviewed speeches and saw diplomatic communiqués before wedding; Miller, 114: Edith encouraged Wilson to accept Bryan’s resignation as secretary of state.

  67. Miller, 99: “She personally made high-level governmental decisions, guessing at what Wilson would have wanted. Sometimes she refused to make necessary decisions and prevented others from making them. She did not hesitate to push out longtime Wilson advisers and appointees. Unquestionably she lied”; Miller, 171: Edith with Woodrow Wilson in Europe for Treaty negotiations; Wilson, 151: coded and decoded messages from House in Europe; Anthony, First Ladies, 352–3, 356, 359, 371, 376, 379.

  68. Miller, 178–215, Anthony, 371–380, and Weinstein, 348–366: narratives of Edith’s role during Wilson’s disability; Miller, 186: “Edith made a crucially important decision.”

  69. James S. McCallops, Edith Bolling Galt Wilson: The Unintended President (New York: Nova History, 2003).

  70. Roberts, Rating the First Ladies, 205–6.

  71. Miller, 152: September 22, 1917–She was seriously ill with a respiratory infection and took to her room for two weeks. Wilson postponed an important meeting with Colonel House; Wilson, 144: In summer, 1917, Edith awoke with high fever, aching all over. Grayson was away and Ruffin was sent for and he pronounced the ailment grippe. Since Grayson was gone for a month, Altrude, Edith’s close companion and Grayson’s wife, stayed at the White House: “I was in my room more than two weeks.”<
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  72. Dorland’s Illustrated Medical Dictionary, 23rd ed. (Philadelphia: W.B. Saunders, 1957); McCallops, 42: alleged that Edith Wilson contracted an early case of the pandemic influenza; John M. Barry, The Great Influenza (New York: Penguin, 2004), 93, 96: references to Kansas locations, 383–8: Woodrow Wilson’s bout with the flu in Paris.

  73. Miller, 174; Wilson, 260.

  74. New York Times, January 31, 1924: “well known as a diagnostician”; Anthony, 119–120: “one of the city’s better physicians”; Obituary of Sterling Ruffin, Transactions of the American Clinical and Climatological Association: “a man of distinguished appearance, of great dignity of manner, and of outstanding ability.”

  75. Miller, 239; Wilson, 288, 291, 359; Anthony, 119–120, for Dr. Ruffin’s treatment of Florence Harding.

  76. Miller, 239: Ruffin an “old friend”; Wilson, 85: documented his attendance at the Galt-Wilson wedding; New York Times, October 2, 1925: related the romantic rumors between the widow Edith and Dr. Ruffin.

  77. Edith Bolling Wilson Birthplace and Museum: “The Genealogy of Edith Bolling Wilson,” http://edithbollingwilson.org/the-genealogy-of-edith-bollingwilson/ (March 4, 2013); Anthony, 356, for campaign discussion of Indian heritage.

  78. Miller, 103–5.

  79. Miller, 104–6; Wilson, 29, 51–3, 100.

  80. Wilson, 51: Grayson “a long and valued acquaintance of mine”; Miller, 117: “my dear boy” and successful lobbying for Grayson’s promotion.

  81. Miller, 135; Watson, 140.

  82. Miller, 238; Wilson, 351, 358.

  83. Miller, 261.

  84. Ibid., 242.

  85. Ibid., 257, 260–1.

  Chapter 11

  1. Carl Sferrazza Anthony, Florence Harding: The First Lady, the Jazz Age, and the Death of America’s Most Scandalous President (New York: William Morrow, 1998), xiv.

  2. Cynthia Bittinger, Grace Coolidge: Sudden Star (New York: Nova History, 2005), 87–8.

  3. Ludwig M. Deppisch, “Homeopathic Medicine and Presidential Health,” PHAROS 60, no. 4 (Fall 1997), 5–10.

  4. Ibid.; Chapter Ten, for Van Valzah.