The President is a Sick Man:
Wherein the Supposedly Virtuous Grover Cleveland Survives a Secret Surgery at Sea and Vilified the Courageous Newspaperman Who Dared Expose the Truth
Wherein the Supposedly Virtuous Grover Cleveland Survives a Secret Surgery at Sea and Vilified the Courageous Newspaperman Who Dared Expose the Truth
By Matthew Algeo
2011, Chicago Review Press
On August 29, 1893, a remarkable story appeared in the Philadelphia Press alleging that President Grover Cleveland had taken to his summer home of Gray Gables, not to rest and recuperate for the upcoming expected battles in the U.S. Congress regarding the monetary standard crisis and the worsening economy, and to have some teeth extracted, but from surgery due to cancer.The story was outrageous: It seemed that a team of doctors and dentists had removed a cancerous growth from the President’s mouth, aboard the Oneida, a yacht owned by a friend of the President’s, in early July, and the President had a vulcanized rubber prosthetic placed in his upper jaw. The White House denied these allegations, and re-iterated that President Cleveland simply had some minor dental surgery done, and he had gone to Grey Gables on Long Island after a particularly tough session earlier that year, that’s all. E.J. Edwards, the reporter who broke the story, was soundly rebuked, and even called a liar by the White House staff and the papers sympathetic to the President.
What made the story even more outrageous, of course, is that it turned out to be completely accurate. In early July of that year, President Grover Cleveland underwent surgery for a cancerous tumor found in his upper mouth. He had a vulcanized rubber prosthetic fitted to the space where the tumor was, and it was such a good fit that when he returned to Washington for a special session of Congress, his clear voice squashed any such rumors about his health and he was able to maintain the façade.
While I was already aware of the story, what made Matthew Algeo’s book particularly interesting is it answers why the President feel it was necessary to hide the truth from the American public. From Algeo’s research we learn that the president was facing a very decisive battle regarding the monetary standard. Should it be silver or gold? Cleveland firmly believed the US should be on the gold standard, but was facing very stiff political opposition. We also learn that he felt that the gold standard would help alleviate the deepening economic crisis that the nation was facing, a crisis that eventually became known as the Panic of 1893. In fact, so severe was this crisis that American historians rank it second only to the Great Depression itself in the economic hardship it wrought.
We learn what kind of man Grover Cleveland was, from his beginnings in Buffalo to the White House and beyond. Because of this, we can better understand his personal as well as political reasons to hide the truth. We learn, from Algeo, the contemporary attitudes towards cancer itself: So horrible was it to the public, it was rarely mentioned aloud, and “the dreaded disease” was the common euphemism for it. Cleveland would also have vividly recalled the media circus that surrounded the death, from cancer, of former U.S. President Ulysses S Grant seven years earlier, and wanted nothing to do with that.
We also learn that, like most politicians, Cleveland despised the press, and wanted as little to do with them as possible. Algeo, in his book, goes further than simply saying he hated the press. We learn that Cleveland had fathered an illegitimate child, and had that fact exposed in the press in 1884, when running for the Democratic Presidential nomination, something he never forgave the press for revealing, in spite of the fact that he had provided for the mother and child without any prompting. Interestingly, Cleveland’s strategy in dealing with this was to advise his aides to “tell the truth,” which, ironically, helped him to lie to the American public about the true state of his health.
The book is replete with detail. We learn about the state of medicine in 1893, and why it was not only possible to remove such a tumor, but why Cleveland survived the operation. In fact, he lived fifteen more years; he finished his second term in office thoroughly vilified by his policies regarding the Panic of 1893, his retiring to Princeton, New Jersey, where he became a trustee of the university there, and was occasionally consulted by U.S. President Woodrow Wilson, and we learn of his complaint about stomach pains in 1908, just before he died of a heart attack.
We also learn about what was known about cancer at the time, and Algeo notes the doctors’ concern that it would come back at some point. Perhaps the stomach pains he complained about were the results of the cancer that metastasized as cancers do? We learn that as no autopsy was ever done, we will never know if he had stomach or intestinal cancer or something related. But, thanks to Algeo’s careful attention to detail, we do learn what kind of cancer Cleveland had. Since the tumor was preserved, in 1980, an analysis verified that it was verrucous carcinoma, a rare form of cancer with a low potential for metastasis. We even learn that verrucous carcinoma was first diagnosed in 1948, so it would have been unknown to the surgeons who removed it, or the labs at the time that tried to analyse it, but it would answer the question of why cancer never re-appeared in Cleveland, and even if he had cancer when he died, it was unlikely to have been from the tumor. Algeo even offers an interesting story as to why it took so long for the tumor to have been analysed.
Matthew Algeo could have simply offered a straightforward description of the event, but because he offered such detailed information about the man, the operation, and the politics of the period, I learned a lot more from the book than simply the answer to the question of why Cleveland hid it from the public. It’s a rare treat to get such a fascinating insight into not just the political or economic aspects, but the social and even the state and history of medicine, that makes this book such a treat and delight to read.
