The Health of the First Ladies: Medical Histories from Martha Washington to Michelle Obama (45 page)

82.
Watson, 36: “brutalized by her husband’s critics”; Evans, 178, for Mrs. Lincoln’s reaction.

83.
Keckley, 45, for Mary’s judgment on Seward; Sandburg, 393; Evans, 172; Donald, 427–8.

84.
Donald, 271; Evans, 169–70, for New York City shopping spree; Keckley, 29.

85.
Clinton, 219, Evans, 169–70, and Keckley, 53: Mrs. Lincoln’s continued extravagance; Packard, 210: purchases from Galt Brothers.

86.
Emerson, 13; Clinton, 169–70.

87.
Clinton, 165–7; Keckley 34–5; Packard, 119.

88.
Clinton, 165–7, 169–70; Packard, 114–6, for typhoid fever diagnosis.

89.
Clinton, 212.

90.
Evans, 185–6.

91.
Emerson, 17.

92.
 Clinton, 182–89; Donald, 427; Emerson, 36–7; Sandburg, 394. For more on spiritualism, the reader is referred to the following: “The Fox Sisters: Spiritualism’s Unlikely Founders,” http://www.histroynet.com/the-fox-sisters-spiritualisms-unlikely-founders.htm. Maggie and Katy Fox were charlatans but had a remarkable career for decades as they duped countless people into communication with their beloved deceased; “Charles J. Colchester,” http://www.mrlincolnswhitehouse.org/content_inside.asp?ID=179&sub.htm. Colchester was a medium who was a fake. He conducted séances for Mrs. Lincoln, including one at the Soldier’s Home. Journalist Noah Brooks, a friend of the First Lady, exposed Colchester and destroyed Colchester’s attempt to blackmail Mrs. Lincoln; Nettie Colburn Maynard,
Séances in Washington: Abraham Lincoln and Spiritualism During the Civil War
(Toronto: Ancient Wisdom, 2011) (originally published as
Was
Abraham Lincoln a Spiritualist?
in 1891). Nettie Colburn described séances with Abraham Lincoln and Mary Lincoln in the White House from 1863 to 1865. William Mumler: Louis Kaplan,
The Strange Case of William Mumler, Spirit Photographer
(Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2008). Mumler was also a fake. He produced a photograph of Abraham Lincoln superimposed upon a photo of Mary Lincoln.

93.
Donald, 427; Beidler, 20.

94.
Donald, 572–3; Beidler, 23–4; Packard, 229–30; Keckley, 59–60.

95.
Emerson, 16.

96.
Emerson, 16; Packard, 162.

97.
Emerson, 16; Packard, 162; Clinton, 221: Robert Lincoln’s conclusion.

98.
Packard, 162; Clinton, 121; 255 for Mary Lincoln’s state after the funeral events were over.

99.
Jonathan R.T. Davidson, Kathryn M. Connor and Marvin Swartz: “Mental Illness in U.S. Presidents Between 1776 and 1974: A Review of Biographical Sources,”
Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease
194, no. 1 (January 2006), 47–51.

100.
Robert P. Watson,
The Presidents’ Wives
, 143.

101.
Ibid., 195; John B. Roberts, II,
Rating the First Ladies
(New York: Citadel, 2003), xxiv.

102.
The reader is directed to the following excellent references: W.A. Evans,
Mrs. Abraham Lincoln: A Study of Her Personality and Her Influence on Lincoln
; Mark E. Neely, Jr., and R. Gerald McMurtry,
The Insanity File
; Jason Emerson,
The Madness of Mary Lincoln
; Clinton,
Mrs. Lincoln
.

103.
Neely and McMurtry,
The Insanity File
.

104.
Evans, 217: account of money; Emerson, 114: her accusation against Robert Lincoln.

105.
Emerson, 40, and Evans, 215: “An Indian spirit was removing her scalp”; Evans, 222–3, lists her delusions; Evans, 222–3, and Emerson, 67–70, for discussions of suicide with Keckley; Emerson, 185–90: 1875 suicide attempt.

106.
Emerson, 185–190.

107.
Evans, 318: as early as 1860; Clinton, 221: began with carriage accident; Emerson, 16: signs of mental illness preceded Lincoln’s assassination; Evans, 186, 305:illness a result of Willie’s and Abraham’s deaths.

108.
Roberts, 114.

1.
Ishbel Ross,
The General’s Wife: The Life of Mrs. Ulysses S. Grant
(New York: Dodd, Mead, 1959), 220–1.

2.
Russell L. Mahan,
Lucy Webb Hayes: A First Lady by Example
(New York: Nova Science, 2011), 72.

3.
Ross, 8.

4.
Emily Geer,
First Lady: The Life of Lucy Webb Hayes
(Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 1984), 8, 10, 16; Mahan, 17. Wesleyan Female College was founded in Cincinnati in 1812 but was established as a woman’s college only in 1846. At the time of Lucy’s matriculation, the school had an enrollment of 340 women. She graduated after three years in 1859 with a well-rounded education that probably included rhetoric, mathematics, geology, painting, French, German and English. The college’s notable contribution was the introduction of the terms
alumna
and
alumnae.
Lack of funds forced the school’s closure in 1892.

5.
Ross, 198.

6.
Geer, 93. Rutherford Hayes was governor of Ohio, 1868–1872 and 1876–1877.

7.
Julia Grant; National First Ladies’ Library, http://www.firstladies.org/biographies/firstladies.aspx?biography=19 (accessed 19 February 2013).

8.
Jean Edward Smith,
Grant
(New York: Simon & Schuster, 2001), 473.

9.
Julia Grant, National First Ladies’ Library.

10.
Ross, 207–9.

11.
Geer, 138; Mahan, 8.

12.
Carl Sferrazza Anthony,
First Ladies: The Saga of the Presidents’ Wives and Their Power, 1789–1961
, vols. 1 and 2 (New York: William Morrow, 1990), 227; Geer, 233.

13.
Geer, 144: “Washington reporters began to praise Lucy’s competence as a hostess and appreciate her”; 188: On June 19, 1878, in the Blue Room of the White House, Emily Platt, Lucy Hayes’ niece, companion and efficient secretary married General Russell Hayes, a military colleague of the president.

14.
Lucy Hayes, National First Ladies’ Library, http://www.firstladies.org/biographies/firstladies.aspx?biography=20 (accessed 19 February 2013).

15.
Julia Grant, National First Ladies’ Library.

16.
Ross, 37: “troubled her considerably”; 329; refusal to wear glasses.

17.
Ibid., 37.

18.
Ibid., 221–2. Ulysses Grant stopped his wife from surgery at the last minute, saying, “My dear, I know that I am very selfish and ought not to say what I am going to; but I don’t want to have your eyes fooled with. They are all right as they are. They look just as they looked the first time I ever saw them—the same eyes I looked into when I fell in love with you.”

19.
Surgical Management of Strabismus
, Chapter 1, “History of Strabismus Surgery, http://www.cybersight.org/bins/volume_oage.asp?cid=1–2161–2252 (20 February 2013). In 1839 Dieffenbach performed the first successful surgery to correct strabismus. He removed part of the medial rectus extraocular muscle to correct an internal squint. It took some years before modern anesthetic and surgical techniques permitted such surgery to become routine in America.

20.
Ross, 234.

21.
Mahan, 2–3.

22.
Geer, 36–7.

23.
Ibid., 106–7.

24.
Mahan, 29.

25.
Geer, 109.

26.
Mahan, 1: “on election day”; 72: “the only drawback.”

27.
Ibid., 103; Lucy Hayes, National First Ladies’ Library.

28.
Geer, 109, 210.

29.
Mahan, 72: “She is large but not unwieldy.”

30.
Ibid., 101.

31.
Geer, 255.

32.
Ibid., 36–7: instances of arthritic attacks; Mahan, 29–30: “For ten days has had her rheumatism creeping over her from one place to another, giving her great pain. It began in her left shoulder and arm and in her neck.”

33.
Deppisch,
The White House Physician
, 46–7.

1.
Mary Lord Dimmick diary entry, May 20, 1892: Benjamin Harrison Home, “The medical conclusion of Dr. Franklin Gardiner.”

2.
Please refer to Chapter One (yellow fever) and Chapter Two (malaria) of this book; J. Arthur Myers,
Tuberculosis: A Half Century of Study and Conquest
(St. Louis: Warren H. Green, 1970), 305; David L. Ellison,
Healing Tuberculosis in the Woods: Medicine and Science at the End of the Nineteenth Century
(Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1994), 11.

3.
Robert P. Watson,
First Ladies of the United States: A Biographical Dictionary
(Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 2001), 56.

4.
http://ask.yahoo.com/20020417.html (accessed 26 January 2012. “Consumption” is an old name for tuberculosis (TB) that describes how the illness wastes away, or consumes, its victims. TB is “an ancient enemy” that has plagued humankind for more than five thousand years. The Greeks called it phthisis, and Hippocrates advised his medical students against treating it because it was almost always deadly, and a dead patient was bad for business;
Indianapolis News
, October 24 and 25, 1892.

5.
Harry J. Sievers, S.J.:
Benjamin Harrison: Hoosier Warrior
(Chicago: Henry Regnery, 1952): 72–3, 75, 78.

6.
Ibid.; Sievers, 194, 224–6, 237, 292.

7.
Sievers,
Benjamin Harrison: Hoosier Warrior
, 207; Charles W. Calhoun,
Benjamin Harrison
(New York: Henry Holt, 2005): 143; Dimmick diary entry, January 24, 1891: “Mrs. Harrison’s reception, but she was too ill to receive”; Dimmick letter to Mrs. Putzi, September 23, 1891: Mrs. Harrison has been “ill for the past few days”;
Indianapolis News
, October 24 and 25, 1892; Mary Lord Dimmick diary entry, December 29, 1891.

8.
Library of Congress, Benjamin Harrison archives: presence at February 16 dinner; Anne Chieko Moore,
Caroline Lavinia Scott Harrison
(New York: Nova History, 2005), 51–2: presence at April 6, 1892, dinner, “catarrhal pneumonia,” pallor and cough at April 6 dinner.

9.
Dimmick diary entry, April 7, 1892, records the onset of her continuous nursing of her aunt; diary entry, April 23, 1892: “suffers much from depression.” The diagnosis of malaria was a diagnostic construct by the uninformed Dimmick. Caroline Harrison never had malaria; diary entry, May 14, 1892: “still very depressed and nervous”; diary entry, May 21, 1892: “very nervous and ill all day”; Mary Lord Dimmick letter to May Saunders Harrison, July 28, 1892: “state of melancholia.”

10.
New York Tribune
, October 25, 1892; Medical and Surgical Register of the United States and Canada, 1898.

11.
Dimmick diary entries, May 14 and 19, 1892; Dimmick diary, May 20, 1892: Dr. Doughy’s erroneous diagnosis.

12.
Dimmick diary, several entries, May 22–29, 1892; Calhoun, 143: for initial experience at Loon Lake.

13.
New York Tribune
, October 25, 1892, and Moore, 51, for the diagnosis and treatment of Mrs. Harrison’s pleurisy;
New York Tribune
, October 25, 1892, and Dimmick diary, September 14 or 15, 1892, for Edmund Trudeau; Moore, 52, for press release.

14.
Harry J. Sievers, S.J.,
Benjamin Harrison: Hoosier President
(Newtown, CT: American Political Biography, 1996), 242.

15.
New York Tribune
, October 25, 1892; Dimmick diaries, several entries.

16.
Ellison,
Healing Tuberculosis in the Woods
, 1; William G. Rothstein,
American Physicians in the 19th Century: From Sects to Science
(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1985), 267–272.

17.
Robert Taylor,
Saranac: America’s Magic Mountain
(Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1986), 75; Thomas M. Daniel,
Captain of Death: The Story of Tuberculosis
(Rochester: University of Rochester Press, 1997), 108–9; Thomas Dormandy,
The White Death: A History of Tuberculosis
(London: Hambledon, 1999), 177–182.

18.
Edward Livingston Trudeau,
An Autobiography
(New York: Lea and Febiger, 1915), 243.

19.
Benjamin Harrison (Indianapolis) to Dr. E.L. Trudeau (Saranac Lake, New York), March 22, 1899 (Library of Congress Benjamin Harrison Collection).

20.
Deppisch,
The White House Physician
, 54, 60.

21.
Obituary of Dr. Franklin A. Gardner,
New York Times
, February 13, 1903; Mrs. Franklin Gardner, notes to Benjamin Harrison, March 18, 1892, April 1, 1892.

22.
W.H. Crook,
Memories of the White House: The Home Life of Our Presidents from Lincoln to Roosevelt, Being Personal Recollections of Colonel W.H. Crook
(Boston: Little, Brown, 1911), 229–30; Carl Sferrazza Anthony,
America’s First Families: An Inside View of 200 Years of Private Life in the White House
(New York: Simon & Schuster, 2000), 211; Franklin A. Gardner, letters to Benjamin Harrison, September 5, 1898, January 15, 1899, and January 22, 1899; Benjamin Harrison, letters to F.E. Doughty, November 10, 1897, and June 3, 1898; Degregorio, 332, 334.

23.
The allopathic-homeopathic conflict will be discussed at length in a later chapter;
New York Tribune
, October 25, 1892;
Medical
Mirror
3 (1892), 471–2, 514.

24.
John Scott, letter to Henry Scott, May 3, 1858. John Scott was Caroline Harrison’s father and Henry was her brother (courtesy of President Benjamin Harrison Home, Indianapolis); Moore, 11; Robert P. Watson,
First Ladies of the United States: A Biographical Dictionary
(Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 2001), 153.

25.
Moore, 21–2: In January 1883, “she began a three month convalescence at a New York hospital following surgery”; Sievers,
Benjamin Harrison:
Hoosier Statesman
, 227–9: Health “sunk to a new low in January, 1883 and she stayed under doctor’s care in New York until the middle of March. Surgery kept her hospitalized”; Valerie J. Riley and John Spurlock: “Vesicovaginal Fistula,” http://emedicine.medscape.com/article/267943-overview (July 28, 2009).