Presidents’ Illnesses Often Shrouded in Secrecy

Since 1832, when Andrew Jackson underwent surgery for removal of a bullet that lodged in his chest during a duel 26 years earlier, U.S. presidents have undergone a variety of operations and illnesses under varying degrees of public scrutiny.

Removal of the ball from Jackson’s chest by the Navy’s chief surgeon was recorded in the press. But later, when a bullet left over from a second duel was extracted from his left shoulder, reports were so fragmentary that the name of the surgeon has not survived.

In 1893, secrecy masked an operation on President Grover Cleveland’s cancerous jaw. Anxious to avoid turmoil, aides spirited Cleveland aboard a yacht in New York harbor, and the operation was conducted successfully. It took months for the news to leak.

The same kind of thinking led to urgent efforts by the White House staff to cover up the seriousness of the stroke suffered by Woodrow Wilson in 1919. His wife, Edith, worked with aides to see that presidential business continued.

But even in the discreet past, some things could not be hidden. Thanks to the telegraph, the world knew within minutes that Abraham Lincoln, James A. Garfield and William McKinley had been struck by assassins’ bullets.

The invention of radio and TV made it more difficult for the White House to temporize. Openness had been the policy since former President Dwight D. Eisenhower successfully weathered a heart attack in September, 1955, and an operation for ileitis in June, 1956.

When President Lyndon B. Johnson had a gallbladder operation on Oct. 8, 1965, the world was informed of every move. In 1968, Johnson weathered a dual operation for removal of a non-malignant polyp from his throat and correction of a ventral hernia.

Former President Richard M. Nixon, however, tried to make a secret of the fact that his left leg was swollen with phlebitis in June, 1974. After his resignation that August, Nixon was hospitalized for a blood clot linked to the disease.

The world was informed when former President Jimmy Carter was confined to his bed for a day just before Christmas, 1976, while White House physicians treated him for a hemorrhoidal condition. Surgery proved unnecessary.

President Reagan was hospitalied for two weeks 1981 after surgeons removed a bullet from his lung after an attempt on his life. He was pronounced fully recovered some months later.