Hidden Histories of Presidential Medical Dramas

In 1790, George Washington fell severely ill, threatening his life and the young nation he led.

The accepted wisdom is that the shortest-serving president developed pneumonia after delivering a long Inaugural Address in cold weather. But that might not be true.

Some suspected assassination, perhaps by poisoning, when President Zachary Taylor died unexpectedly after a brief and unexpected illness on July 9, 1850. What actually took down this previously robust military man?

Abraham Lincoln fought clinical depression all his life, and if he were alive today, his condition would be treated as a “character issue”—that is, as a political liability. His condition was indeed a character issue: it gave him the tools to save the nation.

President Grover Cleveland believed that if anything happened to his trademark mustache during his surgery at sea, the public would know something was wrong.

During the summer of 1923, President Warren G. Harding and First Lady Florence Harding did what many do during the warmer months: They decided to take a road trip. Though much of the trip went well, by the end of the summer, Harding would end up dead and his wife’s reputation under attack.

After President Woodrow Wilson suffered a debilitating stroke on Oct. 2, 1919, First Lady Edith Bolling Galt Wilson was, essentially, the nation’s chief executive until her husband’s second term concluded in March of 1921.

Roosevelt, diagnosed with congestive heart failure, probably had a year to live, a doctor said. The president, a Democrat, decided to run anyway—and to do everything he could to put a healthy face on a dying one.

The core of the Kennedy image was, in many respects, a lie. A presidential biographer, granted access to medical files, portrays a man far sicker than the public knew.

An interview with Lawrence Altman, a physician who has been writing for the New York Times for more than fifty years, with a focus on the health of political leaders. His interview with Ronald Reagan in 1980 marked the first time a candidate had extensively discussed his health with a reporter.

Which version of the president will show up next?

Why was Rutherford B. Hayes the healthiest US president of all time?