![]() |
Health and Medical History of President Warren HardingPresident #29: 1921-1923
↓
![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() |
![]() |
---|---|---|
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." 1a |
||
This style... | ... means the event occurred while President. |
---|---|
![]() 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."
2
|
![]() ![]() mumps orchitis |
As a boy, Harding had a "severe attack of mumps with swelling of the testicles"
3a.
|
![]() 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.
2
|
![]() aphasia? |
The writer H.L. Mencken thought Harding's English, or "Gamalielese," was the worst
he ever saw
4a:
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"
3b.
|
![]() sterile? no |
In her book, The President's Daughter
5,
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)
3c,
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
3d.
Doctors in Battle Creek concurred, citing Harding's childless marriage
3e.
|
![]() ![]() 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.
3f
|
![]() tobacco habits |
Harding "used tobacco in all forms... two cigars a day, interspersed with a pipe and an
occasional cigarette." He also chewed tobacco.
2
|
![]() suspected heart disease |
By early 1919, Dr. Sawyer began to suspect that Harding had some sort of heart ailment
2.
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"
6a.
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'"
3g.
|
![]() mental inadequacy |
Harding many times voiced his realization that the demands of the Presidency
were beyond his mental abilities.
This must have been obivious to all, and it, along with his death in office,
seems to have moderated what might
have otherwise been much harsher criticism from those who did not like him,
such as the notoriously sharp-tongued Alice Roosevelt Longworth
7a:
I think every one must feel that the brevity of his tenure of office was a mercy to him and to the country. Harding was not a bad man. He was just a slob. He had discovered what was going on around him, and that knowledge, the worry, the thought of the disclosures and shame that were bound to come, undoubtedly undermined his health -- one might say actually killed him.Longworth futher characterizes Harding as "a slack, good-natured man with an unfortunate disposition to surround himself with intimates of questionable character to whom he was unable to say no" 7b. |
![]() ![]() ![]() 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"
2.
Harding's exhaustion compares with his earlier attitude toward sleep, observed by the chief
usher of the White House
8a:
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.
2
(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
MORE, but the illness had started earlier:
Harding told his physician [correctly] that he would not return alive from the trip
9.
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."
2
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.
2
Comment:
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
10a.
Lyman Wilbur, who was a cardiologist and president of Stanford, forecast his death
1
MORE,
as did renowned New York cardiologist Emmanuel Libman
6b.
|
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."
During Presidency |
---|
![]() ![]() 108 reviews
|
Ampres Series
![]() ![]() 64 reviews
|
![]() ![]() 9 reviews
|
![]() ![]() 26 reviews
|
Kansas Series
![]() ![]() 2 reviews
|
Signature Series
![]() ![]() 10 reviews
|
![]() |
a p.380
|
![]() | Comment: Discusses the relationships of Garfield and Harding with homeopathy. Also reprints a Currier & Ives drawing of "The Death of General James A. Garfield, Twentieth President of the United States." |
![]() |
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
|
![]() |
a p.229
|
![]() | Comment: Author claims that Harding fathered an out-of-wedlock daughter with her in 1919, while he was a member of the Senate. |
![]() |
a p.189 b pp.190, 191
Comment: 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.
|
![]() |
a p.325 b pp.320-321
|
![]() |
a p.268
Comment: The Library of Congress contains more of Hoover's first-hand recollections of eight presidents.
|
![]() |
a p.5
|
![]() |
a p.115
Comment: 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.
|
![]() |
a pp.22, 81
Comment: Stoddard was editor and owner of the New York Evening Mail from 1900 to 1925.
|