The Health of the First Ladies: Medical Histories from Martha Washington to Michelle Obama
Authors: M.D. Ludwig M. Deppisch
Also by Ludwig M. Deppisch, M.D.
The White House Physician: A History from Washington to George W. Bush
(McFarland, 2007)
Medical Histories from Martha Washington to Michelle Obama
Ludwig M. Deppisch, M.D.
Foreword by Dr. Connie Mariano
McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers
Jefferson, North Carolina
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGUING DATA ARE AVAILABLE
BRITISH LIBRARY CATALOGUING DATA ARE AVAILABLE
e-ISBN: 978-1-4766-1766-4
© 2015 Ludwig M. Deppisch, M.D. All rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying or recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
On the cover:
top to bottom
First Ladies Martha Washington, Louisa Catherine Adams, Eleanor Roosevelt, Jackie Kennedy and Nancy Reagan (all photographs
Library of Congress);
background
the White House (iStock/Thinkstock)
McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers
Box 611, Jefferson, North Carolina 28640
www.mcfarlandpub.com
To Barbara and Carl
with pride and love
Part I: Before the Advent of Modern Medicine
Two. Malaria in the White House: Abigail Adams, Sarah Polk and Lucretia Garfield
Three. Letitia Tyler: A First Lady Dies in the White House
Seven. Tuberculosis: The White Plague Kills Caroline Harrison and Ravages Other First Ladies
Part II: The Twentieth Century
Eight. Ida McKinley and the Audition of the First White House Physician
Nine. Strokes, Stress and Smokes: Nellie Taft and Pat Nixon
Ten. Ellen and Edith: Woodrow Wilson’s Two Wives
Eleven. Homeopathic Physicians and the Kidney Disease of Florence Harding and Grace Coolidge
Twelve. Mamie Eisenhower and Menière’s Disease
Part III: Modern Times and Into the Twenty- First Century
Fifteen. Breast Cancer and Other Maladies: Betty Ford, Rosalynn Carter and Nancy Reagan
Sixteen. Modern-Day First Ladies: Barbara Bush, Hillary Clinton, Laura Bush and Michelle Obama
Seventeen. The Diseases, Burdens and Confidentiality of First Ladies
Once again I have discovered that the writing of a book of history is a long, arduous, and complex undertaking. For an author to complete this task, the assistance of many is a necessity. To those people, the following acknowledgments in print are but a modest and inadequate expression of my appreciation.
I owe special thanks to Dr. Jeanne Clarke for her unselfish commentary and copyediting of the manuscript; to Dr. Connie Mariano for her generosity in sharing her unique perspective on the workings of the White House Medical Unit; to Dr. Katherine Morrissey, teacher extraordinaire, for her encouragement and insights; to Andre Sobocinski, a splendid public servant, for his knowledge and assistance in innumerable ways.
Hannah Fisher, research librarian of the University of Arizona Health Sciences Library, was never presented with the name of an obscure physician whose biography she failed to locate. Carl Sferrazza Anthony, historian to the National First Ladies’ Library, graciously answered my many requests for information. Mike Shaw’s computer skills were of great assistance in the final organization of the manuscript.
Special thanks are owed to the National First Ladies’ Library, Canton, Ohio. This unique institution has become a comprehensive repository of information related to America’s first ladies. Its extensive bibliography became for me an indispensible source of first ladies information.
I am grateful to the many librarians and archivists who responded to my requests with generosity and patience: Kevin Bailey, Ellen Brightly, Jennifer Capps, Tiffany Cole, Peggy Dillard, Judith Graham, David Haugard, Nancy Johnson, Laura Karas, Patrick Kerwin, Pat Krider, Nancy Miller, Nancy Hord Patterson, Arlene Shaner, Heidi Stello, Cynthia Van Ness. My sincere apologies to anyone whose assistance I may have neglected to acknowledge.
Thank you to my medical colleagues whose insights and counsel have been most helpful in the writing of this book: Doctors Rob Darling, Jonathan Davidson, Emanuel Husu, Howard Lein, Alan Levenson, Hugh Smith and Dick Tubb.
And finally, and most important, thank you to my wonderful family: my children, Barbara, Carl and Rich, my grandchildren Nick, Joey and Jake, and, above all, my dear wife, Rosemarie. The book is done. I am back in your lives.
Dr. Connie Mariano
When I first arrived at the White House in 1992 as the new White House physician, I received a detailed orientation covering my responsibilities. I was to take care of the president but was also responsible for the care of the first lady. I was instructed early in my nine-year White House tour that any statements regarding the president’s health were to be issued though the White House press secretary with the approval of the president. On the other hand, there were to be no statements issued about the health of the first lady. Since the wife of the president was not an elected official, her health and medical history were considered private issues and not for discussion in the press.
In his
The Health of the First Ladies,
Dr. Lud Deppisch breaks taboo and tradition. He explores the health history of each of the first ladies in a scholarly and comprehensive manner. He demonstrates that each first lady is representative of the women of her ea. He divulges through his meticulous research their medical issues, access to care, and the way they were each treated in sickness and in health.
Why is the health of the first lady significant? When you look at the inner circle of the president of the United States, no one has greater access to, and intimacy with, the president than the first lady. She is the first voice he hears every morning and the last voice he hears every night. If the first lady suffers from an illness, her condition most likely would impact the president’s attention, concern, and, ultimately, his ability to function in office. Dr. Deppisch offers an illuminating and fascinating look at the importance of the health of the presidential spouse.
Dr. Connie Mariano was the White House physician from 1992 to 2001 and is the author of
The White House Doctor: My Patients Were Presidents
Rising Interest in the Lady in the White House
Eleanor Roosevelt shattered the mold that traditionally confined presidential spouses to the background, if not to obscurity.
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Mrs. Roosevelt stepped far beyond the shadow cast by the formidable figure of her quadruple-elected husband to become a public political figure in her own right. Later, in a different fashion, Jacqueline Kennedy illuminated the visual and print media with her stylish success in fulfilling the social and ceremonial responsibilities of a first lady. Pat Nixon, Hillary Clinton, Laura Bush and Michelle Obama increasingly traveled abroad without their presidential husbands and attracted significant attention while doing so. At the onset of the twenty-first century, the president’s wife has become a celebrity, not a subsidiary. A simple expression by first lady Michelle Obama that Americans should drink more water received disproportionate and substantial wide publication and commentary.
2
Consequently, it is timely to examine in detail a significant aspect of their lives: their health and medical histories. To my knowledge this subject has not been addressed in either a systematic or comprehensive manner.
Dispositive proof of increased interest was the establishment of the National First Ladies’ Library. This institution was founded in 1998 in Canton, Ohio, the hometown of President and Mrs. William McKinley. Mary Regula, social science teacher and wife of Ohio state legislator Ralph Regula who later became congressman was the force behind its establishment. She was both frustrated and dismayed by the dearth of published information about presidential spouses. Consequently Regula focused her leadership, drive and political savvy to combine the renovation of a historic house in downtown Canton with the establishment of a first ladies bibliography of 40,000 entries. The result was the National First Ladies’ Library located within the renovated Saxton-McKinley House, in which president-to-be William McKinley and his wife, Ida Saxton McKinley, resided for fourteen years while he was a congressman. The library also serves as the museum of the Saxton-McKinley homestead. It presents frequent exhibits and events and has become an important and invaluable resource for education and research about America’s first ladies.
3
Biographies and autobiographies of individual presidential spouses have long filled the shelves of university libraries. Occasionally these books have reached prominence either by placement on best-seller lists or by the published accolades of prestigious academic panels.
4
Several writers have broadened the scholarship on this topic; these historians have either authored or edited biographical synopses inclusive of all first ladies at the time of this publication. Perhaps the first to attempt this task was the prolific Laura C. Holloway. Her
The Ladies of the White House: Or, In the Home of the Presidents; Being a Complete History of the Social and Domestic Lives of the Presidents
from Washington to the Present Time, 1789–1881
was published in 1881 by the Bradley publishing house in Philadelphia.
5
Historian Betty Boyd Caroli has updated her compendium,
First Ladies
, at least three times since 1987. In the introduction to her initial edition, she wrote the following: “In the beginning, I considered writing a history of the institution of first lady, a book that would have documented the decision making process, the level of staff performance, and the rise in power of the distaff side of the White House. I abandoned the project when I realized that most readers would want more biographical information than that volume would have involved…. Whatever the future, the bicentennial of the Constitution approaches, and it seems appropriate to look at presidents’ wives and see how the role of First Lady was transformed from ceremonial backup to substantive world figure.”
6
Carl Sferrazza Anthony is the consultant historian to the National First Ladies’ Library. In his two-volume 1990 biography,
First Ladies: The Saga of the Presidents’ Wives and Their Power, 1789–1961
, he wrote: “What intrigued me most was their varying degrees of power…. How much power did she exercise? How much influence did she seek to wield, and how successful was she? … Another consideration was how well they embodied their eras…. So I have placed great emphasis on the times, and one woman is used to represent each of the periods. Particular to each, like civil rights, women’s issues, the press and public, technology, and how the women responded to or were affected by them—are woven through the two hundred year story.” In the end, he said, “almost every one of them missed the power.”
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