Warren Harding

========> UNDER CONSTRUCTION <========

The most striking fact about the illness was the almost total exhaustion. As he said to me, he "had no idea that a man could be so completely exhausted." [11a]

President #29.

Lived: 1865·1923.		Served: 1921·1923.

Timeline:

<== 2008
|<== 1776

Maladies = race · nervous breakdowns? · mumps orchitis · minor ails · aphasia? · mastoid surgery · sterile? no · hypertension + diabetes · tobacco habits · suspected heart disease · signs of heart disease · influenza? · infarct ·· Odds & Ends ·· Resources

Maladies and Conditions

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race	Questions about African-American ancestor(s) raised during the campaign????
nervous breakdowns?	Between 1889 and 1901, Harding paid five "protracted" visits to the J. P. Kellogg sanitarium in Battle Creek, Michigan "to recover from fatigue, overstrain, and nervous illnesses." [4]
mumps orchitis	As a boy, Harding had a "severe attack of mumps with swelling of the testicles" [7a].
minor ails	Harding's father was a homeopathic practitioner who attended to most of Harding's minor medical needs. Correspondence between Harding and another homeopath, later White House physician Dr. Charles Sawyer, shows that Senator Harding was treated for "nasal allergy" and dermatitis in 1916-1917. [4]
aphasia?	The writer H.L. Mencken thought Harding's English, or "Gamalielese," was the worst he ever saw [1a]: It reminds me of a string of wet sponges; it reminds me of tattered washing on the line; it reminds me of stale bean soup, of college yells, of dogs barking idiotically through endless nights. It is so bad that a sort of grandeur creeps into it. It drags itself out of a dark abysm... of pish, and crawls insanely up the topmost pinnacle of posh. It is rumble and bumble. It is flap and doodle. It is balder and dash. On the off chance that Mencken was not exaggerating, this raises the question of whether Harding had some type of mild aphasia.
mastoid surgery	Underwent mastoid surgery in 1901 because of "ear trouble" [7b].
sterile? no	In her book, The President's Daughter [2], one Nan Britton claimed she had borne Harding's daughter. Although scholars now accept her story (in part because of similar "ear structure" in Harding and the daughter) [7c], there was enormous controversy when the book appeared in 1927. Harding was then four years dead. His stalwarts claimed Harding was sterile as a consequence of mumps orchitis in childhood [7d]. Doctors in Battle Creek concurred, citing Harding's childless marriage [7e].
hypertension + diabetes	In mid- to late 1919, Harding was still insisting privately that he had no ambitions to be President. His blood pressure was 185 and there were traces of sugar in his urine, he told one colleague, and he did not want the burden of being President. [7f]
tobacco habits	Harding "used tobacco in all forms... two cigars a day, interspersed with a pipe and an occasional cigarette." He also chewed tobacco. [4]
suspected heart disease	By early 1919, Dr. Sawyer began to suspect that Harding had some sort of heart ailment [4]. Bumgarner states, but does not support, that "It is apparent that Harding had significant symptoms related to his heart over at least a 25-year period before he died in 1923" [3a]. In 1918, Harding "was still troubled by his health, physical and mental. He put on weight -- he was over two hundred pounds now -- and for all his golfing, his breath grew shorter. His heart trouble was real enough. 'I had a serious spell of it covering a period of two or three years,' he wrote.... 'As a matter of fact, I have never gotten wholly free of it'" [7g].
signs of heart disease	By 1922, signs of heart disease were increasing. Harding was more easily exhausted and had transient chest pains. "A White House valet described how Harding was forced to sleep with his head propped up by several pillows, a sign of congestive heart failure" [4]. Harding's exhaustion compares with his earlier attitude toward sleep, observed by the chief usher of the White House [5a]: He was never in bed before midnight and more often it was one or two o'clock. He was always up at eight, and when it was suggested to him that he should lie abed in the morning he answered, "No, it is too much like a woman." Sometimes he would go to his office, lie down on the couch, and sleep.
influenza?	In January 1923 Harding had a protracted, enervating gastrointestinal digestive illness that was diagnosed as influenza. [4] (Given that abdominal complaints appeared during the later stages of Harding's cardiac disease, one wonders if this episode could have been abdominal angina.)
infarct	Harding's final illness occured during an extended trip to the West in summer 1923. After playing six holes of golf in Vancouver, Canada, Harding became so tired that, to quell any suspicions, he moved to the 17th hole, then finished the 18th. He later called for White House homeopath Sawyer, complaining of nausea and pain in the upper abdomen. Sawyer found the President had a pulse of 120 beats per minute and was breathing 40 times per minute. (Both of these readings are abnormally high.) "Intensive cardiac therapy including digitalis was started." [4] Harding died suddenly and unexpectedly in his bed in a San Francisco hotel room several days later, on August 2, 1923. Mrs. Harding refused permission for an autopsy. [4] (It is often supposed that Harding died of an acute myocardial infarction, that is, a " heart attack" or "coronary occlusion." However, this should not be supposed merely because he died suddenly. Harding clearly had heart failure (recall the valet's statement), and persons with heart failure are prone to sudden death as well.) His physician diagnosed Harding's fatal myocardial infarct as crab meat poisoning. [6a] Lyman Wilbur forecast his death [11] [More] as did Emmanuel Libman [3b].

Odds & Ends

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For his personal physician while president, Harding picked a family friend from Ohio -- a homeopathic physician. Little wonder that the diagnosis of heart disease was missed for so long. [6a]
Both of Harding's parents were homeopathic practitioners. In 1869, Harding's father, George Tryon Harding, bought a second-hand set of medical books and began reading medicine. Over the next four years he went on rounds with a local homeopath and attended a total of two sessions session at a homeopathic college in Cleveland. With these credentials he was allowed to affix "M.D." after his name. Tryon moved his family to the county seat of Marion, Ohio in search of new patients, but his practice remained marginal. He was regarded as being more interested in sudden riches than the practice of medicine, investing more energy in real estate than in patient care. Harding's mother, Phoebe, was a midwife. On the basis of this practice and assisting her husband, she was granted an Ohio medical license in 1896. She designated herself a homeopathic physician and practiced until her premature death in 1910. Dr. Charles Sawyer entered the Harding's lives in 1897 when Phoebe Harding was accused of malpractice in the death of a child. Sawyer, a respected member of the local homeopathic community, absolved her of all responsibility in the affair. [4]
The Sawyers and the younger Hardings became friends, and after 1904 even traveled together. In 1905 Florence Harding, the wife of the future president, had a kidney removed. In 1913 Sawyer became her physician. "The Duchess," became dependent upon him, and became convinced that only he could keep her alive. The Hardings insisted that Sawyer become White House physician, and he even became a member of the twice-weekly White House poker group. In 1922 The Duchess, now First Lady, developed a "critical" urinary tract illness of her remaining kidney. Two famous consultants, Charles Mayo and John Finney, wanted to operate. Sawyer disagreed, and Mrs. Harding ultimately recovered without surgery. [4]
Another view of the Harding's White House physician (presumably Charles Sawyer) can be found in the memoirs of Ira Smith [9a]:
Mrs. Harding's favorite around the place was a doctor who, through her efforts, became the President's physician; he also became a Brigadier General. He was a little fellow, a bit on the pompous side, and not particularly popular except with the First Lady. So on the first day he arrived in his resplendent uniform, the news photographers went to work on him. They stopped him outside the office and posed him all over the place, but particularly walking down the driveway. He strutted a bit normally, but with the uniform he strutted good. They made him do it over and over, snapping their cameras endlessly while the doctor sweated in the sun.
After about fifteen minutes, while he was panting but still game, I asked one of the boys why they were wasting so much film on him.
"Hell, we're just having fun," he replied. "Nobody's had any film in his camera since the first shot. But we like to see him strut."
Knowing that his political and home lives would be ruined by revelations he adulterously fathered a child [7h], In March 1919 (approximately), Harding tried to convince Nan Britton to terminate the pregnancy. He first offered her a bottle of medication (Dr. Humphrey's No. 11 tablets) that his wife took. "Obliquely, he suggested to her that if he had to choose between medicine and an operation he personally would prefer 'the knife'" [7i]. Britton declined, and on October 22, 1919 delivered the girl who had been conceived in Harding's office the Senate Office Building [7j]. Through the pregnancy, and afterwards, Harding never abandoned Britton [7k].
Two years before becoming First Lady, Mrs. Warren Harding said: "I've seen the inside of the White House. The office is killing Wilson as surely as if he had been stabbed at his desk. Don't ask Warren to run." [10a]

Resources

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Disclosure: Doctor Zebra gets a few pennies if you click & buy from Amazon.

Books (ranked by Amazon.com sales)		More


Warren G. Harding (The American Presidents) John W. Dean; Arthur M. Schlesinger	Six Black Presidents: Black Blood: White Masks USA Auset Bakhufu	Florence Harding: The First Lady, the Jazz Age, and the Death of America's Most Scandalous President Carl Sferrazza Anthony

Resources used by Dr. Zebra

Boller, Paul F. Jr. Presidential Anecdotes. New York: Oxford University Press, 1981. ISBN 0-19-502915-1 @ Amazon [a] p. 229
Britton, Nan. The President's Daughter. New York: Elizabeth Ann Guild, Inc., 1927.
Author claims that Harding fathered an out-of-wedlock daughter with her in 1919, while he was a member of the Senate.
Bumgarner, John R. The Health of the Presidents: The 41 United States Presidents Through 1993 from a Physician's Point of View. Jefferson, NC: MacFarland & Company, 1994. ISBN 0-89950-956-8 @ Amazon [a] p. 189 [b] pp. 190, 191
Devotes one chapter to each President, through Clinton. Written for the layperson, well-referenced, with areas of speculation clearly identified, Dr. Zebra depends heavily on this book. Dr. Bumgarner survived the Bataan Death March and has written an unforgettable book casting a physician's eye on that experience.
Deppisch, LM. Homeopathic medicine and presidential health: homeopathic influences upon two Ohio presidents. Pharos. Fall 1997;60(4):5-10. Pubmed.
Discusses the relationships of Garfield and Harding with homeopathy.
Hoover, Irwin Hood (Ike). 42 Years in the White House. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1934. [a] p. 268
The Library of Congress contains more of Hoover's first-hand recollections of eight presidents.
MacMahon, Edward B. and Curry, Leonard. Medical Cover-Ups in the White House. Washington, DC: Farragut, 1987. ISBN 0-918535-01-8 @ Amazon [a] p. 5
Russell, Francis. The Shadow of Blooming Grove: Warren G. Harding in His Times. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1968. [a] p. 311 [b] p. 138 [c] pp. 669 [d] pp. 642 [e] pp. 311n [f] pp. 331-332 [g] p. 301 [h] pp. 317-318 [i] pp. 317 [j] pp. 310-311 [k] pp. 323
Sawyer, CE; Wilbur, RL; Cooper, CM; Boone, JT; Work, H. President Harding's last illness. J.A.M.A. 1923;81:603.
Smith, Ira R. T.; Morris, Joe Alex. "Dear Mr. President:" The Story of Fifty Years in the White House Mail Room. New York: Julian Messner, 1949. [a] p. 115
Ira Smith was a peppery fellow who ran the White House mail room from 1897 to 1948. He started working during the administration of William McKinley and was the only mail room staffer until the volume of mail made it necessary to hire help during the administration of Franklin Roosevelt.
Stoddard, Henry L. It Costs to Be President. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1938. [a] pp. 22, 81
Stoddard was editor and owner of the New York Evening Mail from 1900 to 1925.
Wilbur, Ray Lyman; with Robinson, Edgar Eugene and Edwards, Paul Carroll (eds.). The Memoirs of Ray Lyman Wilbur 1875-1949. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1960. [a] p. 380 [b] pp. 378-384
The Warren Harding web page at the White House.
(1 match when checked in November 2003)

Alternate index terms: Medical history of President Harding, Medical history of President Warren G. Harding, Medical history of President Warren Gamaliel Harding.

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